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PETER’S BEST SELLER 


THE SYLVIA ARDEN BOOKS 

By MARGARET R. PIPER 

s 

Each one volume, cloth decorative, 
Illustrated. $1.75 


Sylvia’s Experiment: The Cheerful Book 

Trade Mark 

Sylvia of the Hill Top : The Second Cheerful Book 

Trade Mark 

Sylvia Arden Decides: The Third Cheerful Book 

Trade Mark 

-*69<- 

OTHER STORIES 

By MARGARET R. PIPER 
!£ 

The Princess and the Clan, $1.75 
The House on the Hill, $1.75 
Wild Wings, $1.90 
Peter’s Best Seller, $2.00 

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L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (Inc.) 

53 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


#£ 2 * 2 % 












“it was perfectly obvious that he lingered delib¬ 
erately over the performance” (See page 167) 







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T PETER’S T 
BEST SELLER 


BY 

MARGARET REBECCA PIPER 

Author of 

‘Sylvia's Experiment,” “Sylvia of the Hill Top,” 
“Sylvia Arden Decides,” “The House on 
the Hill,” “Wild Wings,” etc. 




ILLUSTRATED BY 

JOHN GOSS 4 



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BOSTON 

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

(INCORPORATED) 

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Copyright, 1923, by 
L. C. Page & Company 
(incorporated) 


Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London 


All rights reserved 


Made in U. S. A. 


* 

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First Impression, September, 1923 


J3- L2S 75 


PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY 

BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A. 

SEP 19'23- n 

©C1A711968 , 

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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I In Which a Dryad Appears Unexpectedly 

on Tuesday . i 

II Peter Tells His Tale.21 

III Peter Elects Manual Labor. 40 

IV Peter Perpetrates a Poem. 64 

V Jimmy Is Definitely Eliminated ... 84 

VI Peter Goes to Church.107 

VII Giddy Follows Up His Prescription . . 132 

VIII In Which Peter Is Caught. 149 

IX The Mysterious Ways of Woman . . . 172 

X Daphne Evolves a Rainbow. 196 

XI In Which Peter Is Taken Possession Of 216 
XII Daphne Misses Prayer Meeting . . . 242 

XIII In Strange Places.271 

XIV Aftermath. 294 

XV As It Was in the Beginning .... 319 









t 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

‘It was perfectly obvious that he lingered de¬ 
liberately over the performance” (See page 
167) . Frontispiece 

‘ ‘Do you think Uncle Robert will like me in¬ 
stantly the way you did?’ ”.49 

‘Daphne perched on the rail opposite him” . . 97 

‘Just at that moment Daphne and her prince 
came into view again” 


223 











Peter’s Best Seller 


CHAPTER I 

IN WHICH A DRYAD APPEARS UNEXPECTEDLY ON 

TUESDAY 

Peter’s gaze was abruptly diverted from its 
serene contemplation of the blue by the unheralded 
advent of the young person in pink who, chancing to 
leap the brown brook which ran gurgling past his 
pine tree, landed within a yard of his long, sprawling 
person. 

“Oh-h!” gasped the young person, startled, not 
having expected Peter to be there. 

“Ah-h!” murmured Peter contentedly, not having 
dared to hope she would prove so adorably pretty. 

Ordinarily Friday was his lucky day. On a mere 
Tuesday like today, an interloper upon his solitude 
might too easily have turned out to be a middle- 
aged, ground-grippered, spectacled, female entymolo- 
gist, whereas the whimsical gods had granted in¬ 
stead, a slim, amber-haired, apple-blossom-cheeked 
dryad, divinely, immortally young, like the June 
season itself. 

Accordingly Peter heaved a deep and grateful 


2 


PETER’S BEST SELLER 


sigh. Here was largess, indeed, and on a Tuesday, 
at that! 

Vaguely his mind began to grope for a fit quota¬ 
tion wherewith to crown his visitor. Was it Burns’ 
“luv” or was it-? 

“I beg your pardon. I hope I didn’t disturb 
you,” thus the dryad, her first questioning gaze hav¬ 
ing apparently assured her that there was nothing 
in the least alarming in Peter’s bland countenance. 

Again he was moved to render thanks to the reign¬ 
ing gods of the moment. The girl’s voice might 
easily have spoiled it all. Often and often during 
his diversified journeyings about the globe he had 
been arrested by a perfect face only to have the illu¬ 
sion tragically shattered when the vision opened its 
lip9 in speech. But this time—praise be!—there 
was no discrepancy. The girl’s voice was fully as 
satisfactory as her face, which was saying a good 
deal. It was a low, throaty contralto with a mysti¬ 
fying and alluring foreign quality to it, a timbre 
which suggested the romance lands, Spain, Italy, at 
least Louisiana, if America at all. It was not at all 
the kind of voice you would have expected to en¬ 
counter in a New England woods though equally 
beyond the shadow of a doubt it was precisely the 
sort of voice an amber-haired dryad ought to mani¬ 
fest in a gold-green wood of a mid-June afternoon. 

Peter, who was acutely sensitive to sound as well 
as to contour and color, Fletcherized, so to speak, his 
delight in this heaven-sent, unlooked for accumula- 




A DRYAD APPEARS 


3 


tion of blessings and almost forgot to answer. But 
perceiving that the dryad seemed on the verge of 
departure, he roused himself to the effort of words. 

“Thanks. You disturbed me very much, I am 
glad to say,” he drawled. 

The dryad opened her eyes a little wider at that 
and looked as if she hardly knew what to make of 
this somewhat paradoxical sounding speech of 
Peter’s. 

She contented herself with a pretty “I’m sorry,” 
pronounced as no native denizen of the New England 
hills could or would have uttered it, all its r’s 
musically intact. 

Having thus pronounced it she turned to go. 

But Peter was of no mind to be left to his solitude, 
seldom having tasted joys more germane to his mood 
and temperament. 

“Wait!” he commanded oracularly. 

The dryad waited, looking back at Peter with a 
direct, inquiring gaze. 

It was then that he made the important discovery 
that her eyes were brown. He had fancied that 
they might be a very dark blue or possibly hazel. 
But no, they were brown, deep and velvety like 
pansies, with elusive golden flecks in them. Brown 
eyes in juxtaposition with apple-blossom cheeks and 
amber hair blowing in the wind made a consum¬ 
mation devoutly to be admired. So thought Peter, 
who was something of a connoisseur in feminine 
beauty. 



4 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


“It may interest you to know,” he remarked, “that 
your very timely arrival has undoubtedly saved my 
poor life. Even at the moment, I was about to perish 
from boredom. In an hour, at the latest, I should 
have been totally and irredeemably resolved into a 
cabbage.” 

The dryad was still poised for flight, but she 
paused at this and surveyed Peter with an air of 
puzzlement. 

“Did you say cabbage?” she asked dubiously. 

Peter raised himself one degree and assumed the 
perpendicular, not, however, venturing to quit en¬ 
tirely the support of his pine tree. 

“I did,” he averred. “Since my dear soul was 
mistress of her choice, in the matter of selection of 
a model vegetable to emulate, she elected the cabbage. 
There is much virtue in your cabbage. It is so calm 
—so incorrigibly respectable—so insubject to tem¬ 
peramental fluctuations—so-” He paused, fan¬ 

ning the air in search of an elusive adjective. He 
was fastidious in adjectives and never called them 
from space hastily or inconsiderately. 

Somewhat unexpectedly the dryad came to his aid. 

“So—unutterably stupid?” she supplied, with just 
the barest suggestion of mockery of Peter’s drawl 
in her charming voice. 

“Precisely,” approved Peter. “So unutterably 
stupid; naturally, unutterable stupidity being, I take 
it, the very essence of the prescription, its sine qua 
non, its cors cordium, so to speak.” 




A DRYAD APPEARS 


5 


The dryad put out both hands in an impulsive 
gesture of protest. 

“Please,” she begged. “I never got beyond amo, 
am as.” 

“Quite far enough,” commended Peter benevo¬ 
lently. “Amo, amas, is—and are—quite sufficient 
unto the day for the pleasure thereof, ample, indeed, 
for many agreeable purposes. You and I, for ex¬ 
ample, could, I dare say, carry on an eminently satis¬ 
factory conversation on the basis of those two simple 
but comprehensive phrases. With variations and 
arranged antiphonally they constitute the world’s 
oldest and most-” 

“I wonder,” interrupted the dryad sternly, “if you 
are quite as impossible as you sound.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as impossible. Say 
rather improbable,” amended Peter amiably. 

The dryad’s lips twitched at this as if against the 
intent of her firmly moulded chin. For a second, 
also, a gleam of mirth, danced in her brown eyes, 
like a sunny little imp before it was demurely cur¬ 
tained in behind her hastily lowered lashes. 

Peter liked the gleam and would have been entirely 
willing to follow it had the lashes permitted. But 
even so, there were compensations as he was not 
slow to appreciate. Moreover, something about the 
effect of a fringe of bronze colored lashes resting 
on a smooth surface of snow and roses set him back 
on the trail of the quotation, temporarily abandoned 
in the press of other important matters. No, it 




6 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


wasn’t Burns’ red, red rose lady-love, nor Words¬ 
worth’s sun and shower darling, nor yet Rosalind 
straying into the Forest of Arden, though she ap¬ 
proximated all three. It was- 

He had closed his eves for an instant the better 
to pursue the quotation without danger of distrac¬ 
tion. Opening them now to exclaim with exultation, 
“Eureka! I have it,” he discovered that he was 
inadvertently addressing nature, and nature alone. 
The dryad was disappearing amid the blue-green 
dusk of the pines and the rosy laurel bloom. Already 
she was by way of being reduced to a mere flutter 
of color, all but indistinguishable from the laurels 
themselves. This would never do. There was dan¬ 
ger that the prettiest girl he had had the luck to 
see for many a moon would be dissolved into a 
pleasurable memory unless immediate steps were 
taken to prevent it. Now a pleasurable memory was 
all very well if you could get nothing better but under 

the circumstances- Under the circumstances 

Peter sat bolt upright, unsupported by his pine tree. 

“I say, you, come back,” he boomed stentoriously. 

Now Peter had excellent lungs and there is no 
doubt but that his command was entirely audible to 
the departing dryad. Nevertheless the flutter flut¬ 
tered on, apparently as deaf to his orders as the, 
laurels. 

It was high time to take steps. Peter took them. 
He was a tall man and possessed of a mighty stride, 
the exercise of which brought him speedily to the 





A DRYAD APPEARS 


7 


elbow of the fugitive who perhaps was not moving 
so very fast after all. 

“Didn’t you hear me ask you to come back?” 
he inquired as one who questions more in sorrow 
than in anger. 

The dryad turned upon him sharply and there was 
a flash of real wrath in her brown eyes. Her whole 
manner indicated distinctly that, at the moment, she 
found him and his insistence not only improbable 
but impossible. A more dauntable person than 
Peter would have acknowledged himself rebuked 
by her gaze. But to be daunted was not Peter’s 
habit. He simply stood, gazing down at the girl 
from his full six feet of manly elevation, completely 
unabashed, his blue eyes disarmingly friendly though 
quizzical, his wide, one-sided smile, with the funny 
little quirk in one corner, inviting not only forgive¬ 
ness but comradeship. 

Peter’s smile was notoriously irresistible. Before 
it, landlords had gone down in the exorbitance of 
their rental terms and politicians surrendered the 
will to graft. Exposed to its contagion, the most 
confirmed misanthropes had been moved, for the 
moment at least, to admit a crack of light to the 
gross, Cimmerian darkness of the universe and the 
most properly brought up maidens, young and old, 
had been beguiled into smiling back, all unintroduced 
and unchaperoned though they were. And be it 
recorded that up to now, neither landlord nor poli¬ 
tician, misanthrope nor maiden, had had cause to 



8 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


regret yielding to the blandishment of that smile 
of Peter’s. 

Possibly the irate dryad intuitively sensed this 
for, even as she stood gazing at Peter, registering 
disapproval of his unencouraged temerity, her eye¬ 
brows suddenly descended and the corners of her 
mouth went up simultaneously, bringing into play a 
delectable, roguish dimple hitherto invisible. 

“I heard you bellow,” she corrected sternly, a 
sternness belied by the traitor dimple which still 
dallied in full view and the little dancing imp of 
mirth which had, without warning, reappeared in 
her eyes, making them look more like pansies than 
ever. 

Peter ignored the sternness, recognized—in par¬ 
liamentary parlance—the dimple and the dancing 
imp. Long since he had reduced life to infinitely 
selectable terms and attained the convenient habit 
of choosing what suited him and leaving the rest to 
take care of itself as best it might. It was a process 
which served him well usually. It did now. 

“You should not have left me. It was very bad 
for my heart,” he chided gently. 

The eyebrows went up again at that, derisively. 

“Your heart! It must be a very weak organ— 
extraordinarily easily affected.” 

“Scarcely easily,” objected Peter. “If you will 
glance in yonder crystal stream you will perceive 
that the provocation was not inconsiderable.” 









A DRYAD APPEARS 


9 


A low bow drove home the speaker’s audacious 
implication. 

“Besides,” he added, “you must admit it is dis¬ 
concerting to have a fairy princess spirited away 
right from under your nose just as you had the 
surpassing luck to discover her.” 

The dryad appeared to reflect on this before she 
answered. 

“If you happen, by any chance to be referring to 
me,” she remarked after a moment, “I assure you 
I am not in the least a fairy princess. Fairy prin¬ 
cesses are as extinct as the dodo. I doubt if at any 
time they ever flourished in Danversville. The cli¬ 
mate isn’t suited to them. Moreover, permit me to 
remind you that if there was any discovering done 
it was I, not you, who did it. Moreover again, I 
wasn’t spirited away at all. I went perfectly volun¬ 
tarily on my two feet.” 

She looked down at the members mentioned as 
she spoke. So did Peter. They were slender and 
well shaped, clad in sturdy, low-heeled, round-toed 
pumps, with straps across the ankle, a style very 
much like what her grandmother might have worn, 
though her grandmother would probably not have 
attracted a man’s attention to them. Possibly she 
would not have done so herself had they been larger 
or less comely. 

Peter nodded approval of the members indicated 
and then lifted his gaze to the charming, expressive, 
young face. How old was she? He wondered. 



10 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


Twenty, twenty-one? Scarcely older certainly and 
yet she had remarkable poise, none of the gaucherie 
of youth. 

“You are mistaken,” he denied. “Fairy princesses 
are never entirely extinct. They are to be found 
in every age and clime, though not, of course, in 
great numbers. Multiplicity would militate against 
their fairy princess-ship. Who wants fairy prin¬ 
cesses by the gross? They are and should be rare 
specimens, not easily discovered, and, when dis¬ 
covered, by no means allowed to escape. Secondly, 
the matter of credit for this chance occasion belongs 
neither to you nor to me. It was staged by the 
benevolent gods and very admirable technique they 
displayed, too, in the performance. One can but 
acknowledge that. But even a benevolent god can 
do no more than set the stage. We are the actors. 
It is for us to play our roles as best we may. It was 
you who broke up the play before the curtain was 
well up, had stage fright and ran away at the critical 
moment, most un-theatrically. And thirdly—and this 
is most important—you were spirited away, whether 
you admit it or not, by a superannuated, entirely 
irrelevant sense of propriety. You did not go volun¬ 
tarily at all—certainly not perfectly voluntarily. 
You-yourself—the real you—wanted most awfully 
to stay and see what would happen next, though you 
went as propriety demanded.” 

“What nonsense!” protested the dryad hastily and 



A DRYAD APPEARS 


11 


firmly, so hastily and so firmly as to have convinced 
a wise by-stander, had such been present, that she 
recognized a degree of truth in Peter’s absurd words. 
“Why should I have wanted to stay? There wasn’t 
any reason for staying,” she added. 

“Reasons!” sighed Peter. “My dear child, why 
have reasons? They are the dullest things in the 
world. Cultivate the habit of acting upon impulse 
at least once a day. But waiving reason, I repeat 
that you-yourself wanted to stay if only out of 
early Evian curiosity.” 

“But you were not very stimulating to interest 
when I left you,” she demurred. “You appeared to 
have fallen into a comatose state, or even to have 

relapsed into—er—cabbageness. You looked-” 

She paused and mischievous sprites played hide-and- 
seek again in her eyes. 

“I know,” admitted Peter. “I may have looked 
unutterably stupid but, as a matter of fact, my 
looks belied me. I was being drastically intelligent, 
almost pedantic, at the moment. I was pursuing a 
quotation.” 

“A quotation? I hope you overtook it,” observed 
the dryad politely. 

“I did. I never permit myself to be balked by 
a mere quotation and I am rather good at pursuing. 
It was Emelye, of course, that you reminded me of, 
at first sight.” 

“Emelye?” puzzled the dryad. 




12 PETER S BEST SELLER 

“Emelye 

‘that fairer was to sene 

Than is the lilie upon her stalke grene 

And fressher than the May with floures newe, 

For with the rose colour stroof her hewe. 

I noot which was the fairer of them twoe.’ ” 

Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred murder 
Chaucer in striving to do him reverence. Peter 
was the hundredth. The poet’s lines lost nothing of 
their native grace and tunefulness upon his lips. 
When he had finished he bowed to the girl, pre¬ 
senting her with the singer’s tribute to beauty and 
his own, as if it were a bouquet which had bloomed 
for her alone. 

Her eyes fell and a faintly heightened “rose 
colour” of her own stole into her cheeks. She 
stooped and broke off a spray of laurel which had 
been caressing her hand all along as she stood there 
listening. She played with the flowers a moment 
before she looked up and for the first time smiled 
full at Peter. 

“Thank you,” she said. “That is very pretty. 
I don’t often find verses in the wood unless I bring 
them here myself. I remember your Emelye now. 
She was rather a disastrous young person, wasn’t 
she? She broke up a perfectly good friendship that 
was getting along very nicely until she came on the 
scene and somebody died Qf the results. Poor 
Palemon! I used to shed tears over that part.” 

“Did you ? Lucky Palemon! Oh, well! He had 
to die some time anyway and ’twas a good cause, 




A DRYAD APPEARS 


13 


in faith. But pray, don’t waste any pity upon him 
at this late date. Rather pity me who am still alive.” 

The dryad surveyed Peter critically and shook 
her head. 

“I don’t see anything in the least pitiable about 
you,” she remarked. “You give the impression of 
a person who is distinctly pleased with himself and 
the world and altogether too accustomed to having 
his own way, at all times. Besides, if you really 
do merit pity, which I doubt, I haven’t time to be¬ 
stow it adequately. I must go, really.” 

“Oh, no! Surely not!” protested Peter. “Why, 
you have only just come and we’ve only just begun 
to get acquainted. You mustn’t go yet. It would 
never do.” 

“I am afraid it is the staying that would never 
do. You see we don’t get acquainted with just 
anybody we happen to meet in the woods in 
Danversville.” 

“A custom more honored in the breach than in 
the observance,” quoth Peter sententiously. “You 
miss a great deal in Danversville.” 

“No doubt we do, still-” 

“Still, there isn’t any real reason why you 
shouldn’t stay and talk to me a little while, now 

that you are here. Especially-” Peter’s half- 

closed, sleepy blue eyes twinkled a little, “especially’ 
as Danversville won’t know.” 

Brown eyes flashed back the twinkle. 





14 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


“That,” murmured the dryad softly, “is a point 
that might be considered.” 

“Pray consider it considered,” invited Peter. 
“Avaunt, vile proprieties!” His gesture dismissed 
said proprieties. “Haste thee, nymph, and sit thee 
down upon yonder stump. Whereas, I discreetly 
sit me down immediately and without more ado upon 
this log, directly opposite.” 

Suiting his action to his words, Peter promptly 
deposited himself upon the lichen-covered log beside 
the path and gazed up at the girl who stood hesi¬ 
tating. His air was gently expectant, hopeful. 

She looked at him, smiled and sat down upon the 
selected stump. 

Perhaps, as Peter had insisted, she had wanted 
to stay all along if only to see what would happen 
next. She was young and it was June. And she 
was a little tired of all the people she knew and of 
living in Danversville where nothing ever happened; 
where one day was so monotonously like its fellow, 
in spite of the fact that every dewy sweet morning 
promised something ere night fall and every mys¬ 
terious, romance laden, starry evening hinted at won¬ 
derful tomorrows—tomorrows which never came. 

Perceiving her actually seated at last upon the 
stump of his choice, Peter sighed contentedly and 
raised his eyes to the pine tops as if bestowing due 
praise upon any guardian angels who might be 
enthroned there. When his gaze descended, the 
blue eyes met brown, flashed and interchange of 



A DRYAD APPEARS 


15 


mutual interest and good will, and made a pact of 
friendship, then and there in the gold-green wood. 

It was Peter who broke the silence. 

“This is very pleasant, is it not?’’ he questioned 
affably as one who delights in the gentle art of 
conversation for its own sake. 

The young person on the stump looked faintly 
dubious and shook her head, her conscience evidently 
not fully at ease over her capitulation to impulse. 

“But, what would Aunt Lucinda say?” she 
counter-questioned. 

“Not having the pleasure of Aunt Lucinda’s 
acquaintance I would not presume to conjecture,” 
returned Peter amiably. “In any case the point 
seems to me entirely irrelevant at the moment. The 
true charm and piquancy of this occasion crystallizes 
into what you are going to say to me and I am going 
to say to you. This is a Beginning, and Beginnings, 
as you may know, are the most delightful things in 
the world.” 

The moss around the stump on which the dryad 
sat was soft and thick and green, a miniature fairy 
forest in itself. As she sat on this velvet carpet she 
appeared to be giving Peter’s statement due 
consideration. 

“You say the most extraordinary things,” she 
said at length, “the kind most people merely think.” 

“Very likely. You see most people don’t dare say 
what they really think lest they be thought mad, 



16 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


whereas I am thought mad any way so it doesn’t 
matter.” 

“But are you—mad, I mean?” The nymph sur¬ 
veyed the log with interest rather than with alarm. 

“North-northwest,” admitted Peter. “Everybody 
is mad, more or less. You are mad. Sam is m-” 

“I am not,” denied the stump with conviction. 
“I am per-fect-ly sane.” 

She divided the abverb into three, evenly stressed 
and elongated syllables as if by the process to 
establish a triple contention of sanity. 

“Oh, no, you are not. Permit me to contradict 
you. No per-fect-ly sane person would deny being 
mad in esse if not in posse. Pardon! We’ll get to 
your words shortly. They are merely hovering dis¬ 
creetly in the wings awaiting their cue. If you were 
impeccably sane—which, thank Heaven, you are not! 
—would you be here at this moment against your 
Aunt Lucinda’s better judgment, parleying with a 
potentially mad ex-cabbage to whom you had not 
been formally introduced? Answer, echoes, answer. 
Lying, lying, lying! In other words, never, no never. 
Sanity gambols from adventures in personality. 
Madness courts ’em.” 

“Adventures in personality,” murmured the dryad 
with a conscience sufficiently silenced by this time 
so that she was thoroughly enjoying the conversa¬ 
tion. “That is rather an interesting phrase. I don’t 
think people in Danversville have them though. We 
can’t very well. We know too much about each 




A DRYAD APPEARS 


17 


other. An adventure in personality would require 
a little mystery in the background, I should think.” 

“Assuredly. Mystery and uncertainty. Sanity 
travels the beaten road. Madness dotes on by-paths.” 
Peter warmed to his subject having so responsive 
an audience. 

“And Beginnings?” prompted the dryad. 

“Exactly. And Beginnings,” approved Peter. “I 
see you are mad enough to grasp the true philosophy. 
A Beginning may lead anywhere.” 

“Or nowhere,” reminded the dryad. 

“True. It is entirely possible for a Beginning to 
personally conduct itself up a blind alley or come 
ker-plunk against a mile high bulwark. But being 
only a Beginning, no harm is done. The gamble of 
the thing is what makes it so interesting. For it is 
equally possible for a Beginning to lead at least into 

the delectable gardens of Arcady or-” Peter’s 

gaze strayed off into the forest-“or even into the 

heart of the Magic Wood itself though that per¬ 
haps is too much to hope,” he added musingly, rather 
to himself than the girl. 

“You sound like a poet. Are you?” she accused. 

“Scarcely, though I have been known to lisp in 
numbers in the days of my youth. At present I am 
nothing—nobody—just Peter Loomis on a vacation 
from himself.” 

“Peter Loomis! Not the Peter Loomis who 
writes books!” The dryad was big-eyed, half 
incredulous. 





18 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


“Wrote,” corrected Peter mildly. “Past tense, 
please. Vanity of vanities, sic transit etcetera and 
other appropriate bromides to taste. Pm the Peter 
Loomis that used to write books.” 

“But don’t write them any more?” 

“I do not.” 

“Why not?” 

“Listen.” Gravely Peter tapped his forehead. 
“What do you hear?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Exactly. You hear quite accurately. That is, 
fictitiously speaking precisely what is occupying the 
space indicated. Nothing—the most complete 
vacuity imaginable. You ask why I don’t write 
books any more. That is why. The particular 
species of flora and fauna that used to inhabit the 
region are extinct. My head is as full of cold 
craters as the moon. I’m written out.” 

Peter delivered this explanation as dispassion¬ 
ately as he might have discussed the theory of gravi¬ 
tation, not at all as if he were making a very personal 
revelation of a very real calamity. Yet to the girl 
listening, it was a calamity for all that, a calamity 
that bordered on tragedy, if it were true. All the 
world knew Peter Loomis’ books. That there should 
be no more of them was an unthinkable catastrophe. 
She said so with conviction. 

“But you couldn’t get written out,” she objected. 
“When people can write as you can they can’t stop. 
They have to keep on till they die.” 



A DRYAD APPEARS 


19 


In return, Peter smiled a little grim smile. 

“Thanks,” he drawled. “You see Fve been 
through with all that. It was what my publisher 
said. It was what all my friends said. It was what 
I said myself—for a time. It couldn’t happen. But 
it did. The god got up and quit the machine. To 
be sure he was only a little trumpery tin god at that. 
He didn’t amount to much. I always knew that. 
But he was a friendly chap and I rather expected 
him to stop on indefinitely till death parted us. But 
he willed otherwise and departed as he had a perfect 
right to do. That’s the end of it.” 

The speaker stooped and picked up a pine cone 
which lay at his feet, turned it meditatively over in 
his hand as if he were pondering its structure. 

“Not that it matters much,” he added, half under 
his breath. “So few things do, you know, when it 
comes to that.” 

He replaced the cone gently on the pine-needled 
path with its fellows. Absent-mindedly he pro¬ 
ceeded to make a little heap of them beside his 
foot. His abstraction gave the girl a chance to 
study his face, an opportunity she was not slow to 
avail herself of. 

He might have been of almost any age between 
thirty and forty. His thick crop of ash-blonde hair 
looked almost gray in the light but there was really 
not a gray hair in it. His skin, too, had a faint, 
grayish pallor though it was unlined save for little 
creases which radiated from the corners of his eyes, 




20 


PETER S REST SELLER 


marks that seemed rather the aftermath of laughter 
than the imprint of dull care. There was something 
baffling in the face, something which hinted at an¬ 
other Peter behind the drawl and the one-sided, 
whimsical smile and the lazy, half closed eyes, a 
Peter different from the man he chose to let the 
world see, a Peter who perhaps amused himself by 
ambuscading behind his nonsense and indolence and 
north-northwest madness. At any rate there was no 
denying that it was an interesting face, the face of 
a man who had lived rather than merely existed, 
and it was a good face too, the girl thought—a 
face you could trust. 



CHAPTER II 


PETER TELLS HIS TALE 

“ ‘Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face, 

Lighting a little Hour or two—was gone,’ ” 

he quoted bending over his cones. 

“And doesn’t it matter to you whether you write 
any more books or not?” wondered the girl. 

Peter shook his head. 

“Not a fraction of a jot whatever a jot may be,” 
he answered. “I seem to be through caring about 
anything. ’Pon my soul, I believe you are being 
sorry for me. It is jolly of you but don’t bother. 
We are not worth it—really we aren’t—neither I 
nor the books.” 

“But it is dreadful to have things—not matter,” 

she objected, following her own course of thought. 

“I want things to matter—till they hurt.” 

Peter nodded comprehension. 

“Of course you do,” he said. “That is youth. 

‘The end of happiness is the beginning of peace.’ 

But who wants peace?” Suddenly he sent a cone 

careening off into the wood and apparently dismissed 

his momentary seriousness of mood at the same time 

for when he looked back at the girl his smile was 

half bantering. “Now let’s talk about you,” he sug- 

21 



22 PETER S BEST SELLER 


gested. “It is your turn. Who are you? Psyche? 
Diana? Sabrina of the Silver Lake? Come now, 
’fess up.” 

She smiled back meeting his change of mood. 

“No, I am nothing but a simple village maid,” 
she retorted. 

“ ‘She went by down and she went by dale, 

With a single rose in her hair.’ 

You know the sort. I live with my uncle and aunt 
in Danversville in a large, white house with green 
blinds, set well back in a large, green yard with 
syringa bushes and lilacs and tiger lilies and widow’s 
tears around the edges, very much like all the other 
houses and yards in Danversville. We wash on 
Monday, iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, 
sweep on Thursday, go to prayer meeting on Friday, 
bake on Saturday and on Sunday go to church and 
Sunday school and Christian Endeavor, off and on, 
all day. And on Monday morning we begin the 
schedule all over again, in precisely the same way 
and thus proceed for fifty-two weeks in the year. 
In between times I give music lessons to the infant 
prodigies of the village, sing in the choir and occa¬ 
sionally manage a Sunday school concert or serve 
refreshments at a church supper or a strawberry 
festival. That is all there is to relate about me, I 
believe.” 

There was a daintily ironic note in the girl’s voice 
as she delivered this capitulation of herself and 



PETER TELLS HIS TALE 23 


though her brown eyes were mirthful it was not 
hard to read behind the mirth the rebellion of youth 
against the eternal monotony of the life she sketched, 
rebellion and something else not quite so clearly 
decipherable. It was the something else which 
divided her in essence from the rest of Danversville, 
it seemed to Peter. Certainly it was the something 
else which piqued his curiosity and was one of the 
reasons aside from her lovely voice and face, that 
made an adventure in personality with her worth 
pursuing. 

“Heavens!” he groaned apropos of the schedule. 
“Can such things still be?” 

“They can in Danversville I assure you. Dan¬ 
versville is as calm, and respectable and as unutter¬ 
ably stupid as your cabbage, if not more so. Some 
day I shall stand up on the monument on the Com¬ 
mon, dedicated to the memory of my Revolutionary 
ancestors, and proclaim a personal Declaration of 
Independence or else I shall do the family washing 
on Sunday or go to see Theda Bara on a prayer 
meeting night. My favorite hero is Lucifer. I don’t 
blame him for balking at the eternal joys of heaven. 
The torments of ten thousand hells must have been 
a blessed relief by way of variety.” 

Peter threw back his head and laughed so loud and 
long and heartily at this outburst that a squirrel 
ran excitedly out on a pine bough over-head to see 
what it was all about. 

“Thank you/' he gasped when his mirth had 



24 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


sufficiently abated to permit speech. “I wouldn’t 
have missed that tirade for ten years of cabbageness. 
It renews my youth as the eagle’s. Thank you a 

thousand times, my dear-” he paused. “I was 

about to add your Christian name but I find that I 
am not yet aware of one. Pray what is it?” 

“It isn’t Christian. It’s heathen,” the young per¬ 
son retorted a little shortly. She was suddenly shy 
and ashamed that she had let herself go like that 
for the benefit of a perfect stranger, she, who was 
by nature and habit exceedingly reticent, even to 
those who were near and dear. Why had she? she 
wondered. 

“Good ! Your heathen name then,” pressed Peter, 
enjoying himself immensely. 

“It is Daphne—Daphne Joyce.” 

“Daphne—Daphne Joyce!” Peter lingered over 
the syllables, pronouncing them earnestly as a little 
earlier he had quoted Chaucer. “No wonder the 
laurels love you, Daphne Joyce! Daphne—Re-joice! 
I thank the gods of nomenclature. I could hardly 
have done it better myself. I’ll have a Daphne in 
my next book. Her eyes will be the color of wood¬ 
land brooks, dark brown with hints of gold in ’em. 
Sometimes they will be deep and shadowy looking 
—all mystery like still pools at twilight and again 
they will flash and sparkle and catch all the sun 

gleams in the world. I forgot-” he sighed, “I 

forgot there were to be no more books. It is rather 
a pity she came so late, isn’t it? With eyes like 





PETER TELLS LIIS TALE 25 


that she would have made an irresistible heroine. 
Too bad!” And again Peter stooped to his cones, 
arranging them this time in neat, little rows, like tiny 
brown-uniformed soldiers on parade. 

Daphne Joyce, whose name had called forth this 
curious rhapsody on the part of Peter Loomis who 
used to write books, said nothing. There was really 
nothing to say. How could one tell whether Peter 
Loomis was, or was not, aware that, allowing for 
some pardonable poetic exaggeration, he had deliv¬ 
ered in his improvisation a fairly accurate description 
of the eyes of the real girl whose name was Daphne 
Joyce. 

Suddenly Peter looked up. 

“Daphne Joyce,” he said. “I begin to feel moved 
to tell my tale, like the Ancient Mariner. Could you 
stand being the Wedding Guest do you think?” 

“I am sure I could,” she said. “ ‘There was a 
ship,’ ” she prompted, folding her hands demurely, 
like a child who is about to listen to a story. 

“There was indeed—an apprenticeship. We need 
not go into the fifty-seven or so varieties of my 
career before I reached the professional author stage. 
Suffice it to say in passing that I have been a steward 
on an ocean liner, a professor of biology, a bar¬ 
tender, a senator’s confidential secretary, a camera 
man, the king of an island, pro tem, an inadvertent 
diamond smuggler, the manager of a baseball team 
and a war correspondent among other things too 
numerous to mention. Most of this was in my green 



26 


PETER’S BEST SELLER 


and salad days. I wasn’t any of these things very 
long. It is one of my virtues or vices that when 
I have discovered what anything is like and have, 
so to speak, squeezed the juice out of it, I am usually 
ready to go on to the next thing. Technically I have 
been what is known as a rolling stone the greater 
part of my life but contrary to the implications of 
that admirable proverb I have, in my time, gathered 
quite a bit of moss—the moss of experience.” 

“I should say so,” sighed Daphne Joyce. “It 
sounds as if there were a mint of stories in your 
own experiences. I envy you. If I were a man I 
wouldn’t settle down into a little, stupid, rutty job 
and serve a life sentence to it. At least I wouldn’t 
till I had tried being a rolling stone for a while 
and learned something about life—outside of cages. 

That is what I am always telling Ji-” She broke 

off abruptly leaving her sentence in mid-air unfin¬ 
ished. “Never mind,” she answered Peter’s inquir¬ 
ing look. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please go 
on. I am very much interested.” 

“It was when I was down in the Islands that I 
shot the albatross, in other words inadvertently 
perpetrated a best seller. We—editorial plural, 
meaning me—were practically the first that ever 
burst into the hitherto unexploited seas of Philippine 
fiction. We never meant to do it. It just happened. 
The place was fairly alive with lurid story stuff, 
bona fide history, crying out to be written up thinly 
disguised as fiction. I had a fling at it, mostly for 





PETER TELLS HIS TALE 27 


my own amusement and lo—unexpectedly it turned 
out to be a best seller. The trick was so damnably 
easy to turn—-I use the adverb advisedly—that I 
have been at it ever since, with my left hand.” 

“With your left hand?” puzzled Daphne. 

“With my left hand. I told you it was only a 
tin god I was entertaining. It was manufactured, 
not created. Given a certain formula which I 
learned early in the game, the product was a dead 
sure thing. So were the profits. The dear public 
lapped up the wretched things as a cat laps cream 
and kept meowing for more. All I had to do was 
to take a little pleasure jaunt to Bombay or Nome 
or Rio and collect the crude material, thick blobs of 
adventure, strange, moving accidents of fire and 
flood, plenty of battle, murder and sudden death, 
conspiracies, two by four revolutions, elemental 
passion, red corpuscle stuff, you know—distribute 
it in a picturesque setting, ultra-hot or ultra-cold, 
palms or glaciers, sharks or polar bears according 
to taste—then pitch the whole into a caldron and let 
it seethe and boil. It came out—a best seller, motion 
picture rights reserved, double royalties, more money 
pouring in than I used to suspect existed. And 

then-” The speaker shrugged and tossing one 

of his cones up in the air caught it deftly as it 
descended. “Then you sit back and it is all over 
but the spending which, beyond a certain point, 
loses its savor. Voila tout!” 

“And fame—the knowledge of having made a 




28 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


real success out of something—isn’t there anything 
in that either?” wondered Daphne Joyce, grave eyed. 

“Ah, but was it really success?” argued Peter. 
“Success is such a comparative thing and has so 
many values. As for fame—so far as my kind of 
work is concerned, I’d take the cash and let the 
credit go every time. Who wouldn’t? But the 
easy notoriety that comes with a best seller isn’t 
fame. Don’t make any mistake about that. ‘Fame 
is no plant that grows on mortal soil.’ See one 
J. Milton. He knew. The real creators do not 
work with a formula and their rewards are mostly 
not in dollars and cents.” 

Daphne Joyce considered this seriously. She 
thought she was beginning to see a little what Peter 
was driving at. All the same she was not entirely 
convinced that writing best sellers was an insig¬ 
nificant labor and not at all convinced that having 
written best sellers a man could run dry and write 
no more. The man at her feet did not look to her 
at all like a person who had only burnt out lunar 
craters in his head or heart. It was puzzling, it 
made her want to probe deeper into the first causes 
of such an impossible situation as Peter Loomis 
claimed was operative in his case. 

“How many years have you been writing books?” 
she pursued following a new tack. 

“Seven. Seven weary years I have done penance 
for that cursed albatross until it fell off last winter 
in the hospital.” 



PETER TELLS HIS TALE 29 


Hospital! Here was new light. So Peter Loomis 
had been ill. The weary slouch of his shoulders, the 
gray pallor of his skin, his conclusion that nothing 
mattered much after all were suddenly interpreted. 

“I did not explain, I believe,” he was continuing, 
“that when I came back from Mexico last winter I 
brought with me quite a choice little souvenir col¬ 
lection of malaria bugs. Possibly it was the presence 
of these bugs which hastened the departure of the 
tin god, but he had meant to quit any way. My last 
book was punk. Even my publisher admitted that 
privately, though he did his best to conceal its de¬ 
ficiencies from the public if possible. It was. The 
public will swallow anything any time. It is one of 
its chief charms—for the author.” 

“But have you tried to write since you got 
better?” persisted Daphne Joyce, bent on getting 
down to facts. 

“Have I tried? Lord, yes! I nearly got a relapse 
last spring trying—really worked at the thing for 
the first time since that too damnably easy, first best 
seller. But it wasn’t any use. The stuff was dead 
—hadn’t a spark of life to it. I wrestled with it 
until I was about crazy and then threw the whole 
dumb thing into the fire where it made a merry little 
blaze—the first cheerful thing there had been about 
it and the first indication it was of inflammable ma¬ 
terial. Having performed this rite I faced my 
friends and my publisher with empty hands and a 
clear conscience and announced that I had definitely 



30 PETER S BEST SELLER_ 

ceased to be an author. They all kicked up quite a 
fuss over it—especially my publisher who had to 
lose most by my backsliding, though to do him 
justice he was really upset on my account as well 
as on his. He was, and is, a darned good friend 
—one of the best. In fact, it is to him that I am 
indebted for one of the prescriptions.” 

“Prescriptions!” Daphne remembered vaguely that 
the word had entered before, somewhere in the 
course of Peter’s random remarks. “What prescrip¬ 
tions? Is that where the ridiculous cabbage idea 
comes in?” 

“The ridiculous cabbage idea as you disrespect¬ 
fully term it enters via Sam. Sam is Dr. Samuel 
P. Garnett who happens to have had the esteemed 
privilege of being a former schoolmate of mine 
and is now, incidentally, a noted nerve specialist. 
Sam labors under the delusion that I am suffering 
from brain fag or a brain storm or something or 
other to do with brains, precipitated by over-in¬ 
dulgence in the vice of perpetrating best sellers at 
inordinate speed. Super-cerebration, I believe, was 
the magnificent sounding word he used in my honor. 
Super-cerebration is, I take it, a kind of mental hot- 
box. The engine runs down and stops the whole 
train in the midst of an alkali plain, no verdure but 
cacti visible. Of course, there is something funda¬ 
mentally wrong with his premises. Best sellers and 
brains haven’t the slightest inherent association. 
Still Sam insists that my brain, such as it is, requires 




PETER TEELS HIS TALE 31 


a complete cessation of fictional functioning along 
with all other mental and emotional sprees. He pre¬ 
scribed a large dose of rustic back ground—eternal, 
unbroken calm—in a nut shell—cabbageness. My 
word—Sam’s idea. It seemed well to give the 
thing a local habitation and a name at least so that 
I could curse it more conveniently.” 

“But why did you select Danversville for the local 
habitation?” wondered Daphne. 

“Because, upon consultation with various persons, 
I discovered that Danversville had the reputation of 
being the deadest spot on the map—a verdict which 
you, my dear Daphne, seem ready to corroborate.” 

“There is no doubt about the deadness,” agreed 
Daphne. “Do you think it will work—the pre¬ 
scription, I mean?” 

“Perish the word work. It is too suggestive, by 
far, of Giddy’s prescription.” 

“Giddy! Is his prescription as frivolous as his 
name?” 

“By no means. Would that it were. Giddy’s 
prescription is, like himself, eminently serious and 
solid. Giddy firmly believes that the rock of my 
salvation, fictionally speaking, is labor—useful, 
plebeian, manual labor. He, too, thinks my brain 
needs a rest. He has cause. To introduce him in 
full, he is Gideon Blakesley, editor of the Interna¬ 
tional Magazine and senior member of the firm of 
Blakesley and Hibbard, publishers of much estimable 
literature and a modicum of trash, including the pro- 



32 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


ductions of yours truly. Just now he is running my 
latest offense as a serial in the International and he 
knows precisely how rotten it is. But Giddy’s idea 
of giving my brain a rest is to impose a counter- 
irritant of physical exertion. He is a great believer 
in honest sweat—for the other fellow. He recom¬ 
mends that, for a season, I forego the superficial, 
deadening luxuries of the flesh, leave behind me the 
whole mass of mental and spiritual complexities 
which are the product of our effete civilization and 
get back to the simple life whence I emanated. At 
the carpenter’s bench or performing a latter day 
Piers Plowman role he fancies that salvation might 
yet be purchased. With my corporeal self engaged 
and my soul free to scale the reaches of infinity, 
Gideon declares that he would not be surprised if I 
achieved the Great American Novel, long heralded 
but not yet made manifest, to the immortal glory of 
all concerned, particularly to Blakesley and Hibbard, 
publishers. What do you think of that, Miss Daphne 
Joyce?” Peter ended his rigmarole to ask with a 
twinkle in his blue eyes. 

“Poof!” replied Miss Daphne Joyce expressively, 
though briefly. 

The twinkle deepened in Peter’s eyes. 

“Precisely and likewise piffles,” he seconded. 
“Quite my own sentiments in the matter. I am not 
exactly enamored of brother Samuel’s prescription 
which I have tried, but my soul is even less drawn 



PETER TELLS HIS TALE 33 


at the moment to brother Gideon’s. Would you care 
to hear the other prescriptions?” 

“Are there others?” 

“Indeed yes, two at least worthy of consideration. 
They both emanate from your own sagacious sex 
so you may find them more appealing. I have a 
friend whose father owns a yacht. She suggests 
that if I join the family on a cruise they are contem¬ 
plating for next month, I may be restored to my 
former state of high manufacturing power. In 
short—Marian’s prescription is travel de luxe. 
What do you think of the idea?” 

“How can I tell—not knowing Marian?” retorted 
the Wedding Guest, a bit maliciously. 

Peter chuckled. 

“Marian isn’t offering herself as a prescription, 
only her society and a water cure.” 

“I understand. Still—is Marian pretty?” 

“Pretty is not the word. She is without excep¬ 
tion, I think, the most beautiful woman I have ever 
seen and that is saying quite some little bit. Artists 
go mad over her profile.” 

“Then I think I should by all means recommend 
the cruise. The prescription sounds propitious.” 

“In any case, if all else fails there is still Mrs. 
Giddy’s prescription,” continued Peter cheerfully. 

But for a moment Daphne’s mind strayed. She 
wondered what it would be like to have been born 
one of the Marians of the world—to drift through 
summer hours, from sapphire sea to sapphire sea, 



34 PETER S BEST SELLER 


past mysteriously alluring islands and towered cities 
full of strange people—to live as a lotus eater, with¬ 
out a care in the world, with only ease and beauty 
on every side! Never to have to remember that 
dishes must be washed after having eaten from 
them, to wonder whether your last spring suit 
could possibly be made to “do” another season, to 
listen, day after day, to monotonous, small, sticky 
fingers, jangling out discords on tinny old pianos 
—to be oneself the most beautiful woman Peter 
Loomis had ever seen, with a profile that artists 
went mad over! She roused herself from her ab¬ 
straction and feeling Peter’s eyes upon her remem¬ 
bered his last words which now came echoing back 
on her ears. 

“Well, what about Mrs. Giddy’s prescription? 
I am waiting,” she said. 

“So was I,” Peter’s smile was friendly. “You 
were a long way off. Was it an interesting 
journey?” 

“Only middling,” said Daphne. “Pm sorry. I am 
back now. Tell me about Mrs. Giddy.” 

“Mrs. Giddy has an interesting notion that I 
shall never be able to write a great book-—mind you, 
not another book, but a great book, until I have been 
absolutely and completely in love with somebody 
beside myself. She insists that at present I am the 
perfect egotist and that I need to be swept out of 
myself into—what is it she called it? Ah, I know. 
It was the Great Adventure. When I embark upon 



PETER TELLS HIS TALE 35 


the Great Adventure and not until then, shall I, 
according to Mrs. Giddy, join the ranks of the cre¬ 
ators. What do you think of Mrs. Giddy’s notion, 
oh thou Wedding Guest?” 

“As to the restorative properties of falling in 
love or that you are the perfect egotist?” 

“The former. The latter is not open to argument. 
I am the perfect egotist. All men are. It began 
with Adam. I mean how do you like the idea of 
my falling in love?” 

“I should think it would be far more to the point 
to consider how you liked it,” temporized Daphne. 

“Oh, I don’t mind trying it if sufficient inducement 
were offered. At this moment indeed, it looks ex¬ 
ceptionally interesting and easy. After all, why 
should I care to write books anyway? There are 
too many being written as it is without my swelling 
the catalogues. Were it not better done to sport 
with Amaryllis in the shade? You don’t mind play¬ 
ing Amaryllis, do you, as well as the Wedding Guest 
and Emelye and a few other roles? Shall we call 
it Amo, amasf And may I smoke? I haven’t for 
a long, long time.” 

“You may smoke but don’t be ridiculous. I am 
seriously considering Mrs. Giddy’s prescription.” 

“So am I,” declared Peter, lighting his cigarette 
and smiling at the girl with eyes that both teased 
and challenged her. 

Daphne ignored the audacity. It seemed the only 
way to treat Peter’s audacities. 



36 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


“I should imagine,” she observed, “that you would 
have fallen in love a great many times before this.” 

“ ‘Before this’ is good,” murmured Peter, blowing 
silver gray smoke rings. “How admirably you ex¬ 
press things, Daphne Joyce.” 

Daphne frowned. 

“You have a very bad habit of purposely misun¬ 
derstanding,” she accused sternly. “ ‘Before this’ 
meant, of course, before your tin god went.” 

“Oh, is that all?” Peter’s tone was regretful. 
“You imagine quite correctly, however. I have 
fallen in love before this, as you say,” he bowed 
toward the girl, “some half a dozen times, possibly 
more. I have lost count. But to fall in love is 
an accidental thing like any other fall, and implies 
by its very nature the possibility of falling out again. 
Hitherto, I have, alas, always fallen out in due sea¬ 
son. Which merely means that Mrs. Giddy is quite 
right. I have never had the luck to experience the 
Great Adventure. The Great Adventure, I assume, 
implies a continuous, immortal journey, starward, 
not a transient, earthly joy ride.” 

Daphne Joyce stirred on her stump and surveyed 
Peter rather severely. 

“Do you really believe that or are you just poking 
fun at the whole idea?” she demanded. 

Peter removed his cigarette. 

“My dear Daphne, I really believe in it with all 
my heart. I have been practically all over the world 
and back looking for it. It is the one regret of my 



PETER TELLS HIS TALE 37 


life that, so far, it has eluded me. But I am not 
one of the persons who refuse to believe that an 
earthquake could take place just because they never 
felt the ground tremble, nor do I scoff at miracles 
because I never experienced any. Of course, you 
believe in the Great Adventure ? I needn’t ask. 
Youth always does.” 

“Oh, yes. I believe in it. I shall always believe 
in it whether I find it or not. My father and 
mother—had it,” she added gravely. 

“In Danversville ?” 

“In spite of Danversville,” said Daphne. 

As she spoke the clock in the belfry of the white 
church half a mile away, tolled out five slow, punc¬ 
tilious strokes as if it meant, even in these degen¬ 
erate days, to do its full duty. 

Daphne jumped up from her stump with an excla¬ 
mation of dismay. 

“Good gracious! It is five o’clock. I must fly. 
Don’t delay me, Mr. Mariner. Don’t you hear the 
loud bassoon? And I promised to make a straw¬ 
berry shortcake for Uncle Robert’s supper.” 

Peter groaned. 

“Avaunt, Tantalus! Talk not to me of strawberry 
shortcakes. They make vile, sweet, cakey ones at 
the Tower Hill Inn, an insult to a noble name and 
fame. But strawberry shortcakes aside, you will 
come again tomorrow?” 

“Impossible,” said Daphne Joyce. 

“Nothing is impossible. Surely, having rescued 



38 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


me from loathly cabbageness, it is your duty to see 
that I do not suffer a relapse. You will return 
tomorrow at three. I shall be here awaiting you. 
Thus saith the law and the prophets.” 

“I am sorry to contradict the law and the prophets 
but really I fear they are misinformed. Tomorrow 
afternoon at three I am going canoeing on the river.” 

“Couldn’t you go canoeing in the morning?” 
suggested Peter. 

“Impossible,” said Daphne again. “Jimmy doesn’t 
get out of the bank until three and not then if his 
books don’t balance.” 

“Jimmy? Ah—your—er—your brother?” 

“No, I haven’t any brother.” 

“Indeed! Then who, may I ask, is Jimmy?” 

“Jimmy is-” Daphne paused as if to account 

for Jimmy satisfactorily in her own mind before she 
committed herself aloud. “Jimmy—why, Jimmy is 
just a young man,” she completed hastily with a tell¬ 
tale and very becoming blush. 

Peter grinned. 

“I assumed as much,” he remarked. “Very well. 
So be it. Tomorrow you shall go canoeing with 
your Jimmy while I disport myself as the calm cab¬ 
bage but, on the next day, which is Thursday, you 
will return without fail to this trysting point.” 

Daphne’s eyebrows had gone up but so also had 
the corners of her mouth. In the end, the mouth 
conquered with the co-operation of the mirth imps 
in her brown eyes. 





PETER TELLS HIS TALE 39 


“Thursday at three—perhaps,” she flung back 
over her shoulder at Peter. “Good-bye and thank 
you for the tale.” 

Once again she became a vanishing flutter of 
pink and finally a pleasant memory only. Peter sat 
very still on his log, lost in meditation. He failed 
even to light a second cigarette, a remarkable omis¬ 
sion on his part. Presently he, too, arose and went 
his solitary way to the Tower Hill Inn. 



CHAPTER III 


PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 

Past three o’clock and Thursday, but no Daphne 
Joyce. Peter sat on his log and smoked innumerable 
cigarettes, yet keeping a watchful eye on the laurels 
and the pine-needled path. At intervals he sighed 
and recrossed his long legs. By this time he had 
experienced a superabundance of cabbageness. Even 
the pines and the squirrels and the yellow warblers 
and nut hatches had begun to pall upon him. It was 
the society of the amber-haired, brown-eyed dryad 
with the musical voice and the faith in the Great 
Adventure that he coveted—that and none other. 
Life would be unspeakably boresome if she did not 
come. But, of course, she would come. The benev¬ 
olent gods could not possibly become so suddenly 
malicious as to will otherwise. 

And just at this point in his meditations Peter 
blinked, recrossed his legs once again, removed his 
cigarette and gave expression to a prolonged “Ah” 
of supreme contentment. The laurels, he had per¬ 
ceived, were exasperatingly stationary, but this new 
bit of color which gleamed afar off, moved, ap¬ 
proached and finally manifested itself in the sub¬ 
stance of things hoped for—otherwise Daphne 
Joyce. 


40 


PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 41 


Through the pines she came, moving neither 
quickly nor slowly, at a pace and with a poise which 
seemed precisely to suit her environment. So Diana 
might have moved coming upon the sleeping Endy- 
mion, thought Peter Loomis. He wondered if she 
would be half so lovely under a roof. It would be 
?. little like taking home a sunrise or domesticating 
a star or a waterfall. And yet- 

But his philosophizing was cut short by the girl’s 
approach. She was bare headed and her hair shone 
like spun gold in the sun. As on Tuesday she was 
clad in rose color and if anything she looked prettier 
than Peter had been imagining her, from memory. 

He saluted solemnly without rising. 

“A contented old cabbage named Peter 
On a log sat waiting to greet her; 

When at length she drew near, 

He remarked, dear, dear, dear! 

Now I find my contentment completer!” 

Daphne Joyce laughed amusedly at this unexpected 
but thoroughly Peteresque greeting. It was the first 
time Peter had heard her laugh and the performance 
was utterly satisfactory; the laugh was as deliciously 
musical as her voice. Everything about her seemed 
to harmonize, not only with herself, but with the 
forest world about her. 

“Sh-sh!” Peter held up a warning finger. “There 
is more where that came from. I hear it buzzing. 
Ah—here it is! Listen! 




42 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


“To the eye of the cabbage, named Peter, 

On Thursday she looked even sweeter, 

So he begged the fair miss 
To bestow him a-” 

But Daphne Joyce interrupted hastily at this point 
though the mirth imps danced in her eyes. 

“I am afraid you are no better,” she murmured. 
“You sound quite—quite mad.” 

“You are right,” admitted Peter genially. “If 
anything, I am worse—much worse. Pray sit down 
and let me rehearse my fatal symptoms.” 

The dryad sat down, this time with no hesitation. 
Having burned Madame Grundy’s bridges, she 
seemed to have no particualr tendency to regret or 
look back. 

“Young woman, you have a great deal to answer 
for,” remarked Peter, after lighting a fresh 
cigarette. 

“I!” 

“You. It is now-” he consulted his watch. 

“It is now twenty-five minutes past three. I am 
surprised at you. Little girls should be prompt as 
well as pretty when sent for to amuse their elders. 
But your dilatoriness is not the chief of your 
offenses. Since four minutes after five on Tuesday 
I have been tormented by the enigma which you 
unfeelingly left upon my hands.” 

“An enigma?” puzzled the dryad. “What 
enigma?” 





PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 43 

“What enigma? Can you ask? Why, Jimmy, of 
course.” 

“Good gracious! What has Jimmy to do with it ?” 

“Precisely. Very well stated, Miss Joyce. The 
problem which has been disturbing my peace of 
mind since Tuesday last does, in fact, simmer down 
to that one point. What has Jimmy to do with it?” 

“To do with what?” The dryad’s tone was mildly 
questioning, but her suddenly down dropped eyelids 
were suggestive of a possible understanding, after 
all, of the bearing of Peter's inquiries. 

“With the plot in general, our Beginning in par¬ 
ticular. I hope, my dear Daphne, that you are not, 
by any chance, engaged to this Jimmy person.” 

Daphne’s eyes remained lowered and she began 
meditatively to push her slippered toe deep in the 
green moss. 

“I wish I knew,” she murmured, “whether by 
any chance, I am engaged to Jimmy or not.” 

“And don’t yon? This is most interesting not 
to say unusual. I should suppose you would be the 
very person to be well informed on that important 
subject. May I ask who does know if you don’t?” 

“Jimmy thinks he knows. He says we are.” 

“But it takes two to make a qu—I mean an en¬ 
gagement. If you are not engaged to Jimmy, quite 
obviously he cannot be engaged to you. It is quite 
simple. I am greatly relieved. Evidently Jimmy has 
nothing whatever to do with it. I was afraid he 
might have.” 




44 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“But he has,” objected Daphne. “And it isn’t 
simple at all. It is horribly complex, more so than 
you can possibly know. Jimmy won’t listen to me 
when I say ‘no,’ though he knows very well I have 
good reasons for saying it.” 

“But if you never said ‘yes’?” persisted Peter 
hopefully. 

“That is one of the minor complications. Jimmy 
insists that I did say yes. I must have been thinking 
of something else at the time. I never meant to 
say it.” 

Peter chuckled. 

“The Woman’s Yes or Did She Say It?—a novel 

in two- Ah, I forgot. Novels are taboo. Why 

not say to your Jimmy, kindly but firmly, ‘My dear 
Jimmy,’—I think we may go to the length of a dear 
Jimmy under the circumstances—‘I am sorry, my 
dear Jimmy, exceedingly sorry for your disappoint¬ 
ment but I have no more intention of marrying you 
than I have of marrying a-’ ” 

“Cabbage?” supplied Daphne Joyce demurely. 

Again Peter chuckled. 

“Cabbage,” he accepted amiably. “That would 
end it. Jimmy would be definitely eliminated.” 

Daphne stared at Peter a little startled. 

“But I don’t know that I want Jimmy eliminated,” 
she said. “I like him much, much better than any 
one else in Danversville excepting Uncle Robert and 
Aunt Lucinda. I just don’t want-” 

“To marry him? I thought as much. That is 






PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 45 


the eternal feminine cropping out. A woman always 
wants to pull out her plums one by one, enjoying 
each exquisitely, still keeping her Christmas pie beau¬ 
tifully intact, all the time. It can’t be done, Daphne 
Joyce. I begin to experience incipient pangs of 
compassion for your Jimmy.” 

“You needn’t worry about Jimmy. He is quite 
capable of being sufficiently sorry for himself. And 
anyway I thought we were going to discuss your 
symptoms instead of mine. How is cabbageness 
prospering?” 

“Cabbageness, by dear Daphne, is permanently 
discarded. We have finished that prescription. The 
pill box is empty.” 

“Are you going to go on to any of the other 
prescriptions?” 

“Not as prescriptions, possibly as diversions. 

Now number four-” Peter’s eyes twinkled 

teasingly. 

“Why not try combining three and four?” sug¬ 
gested Daphne, hastily, to ward off the completion of 
the sentence Peter had begun. “I should think 
Marian and the cruise together ought to work 
wonders.” 

“But do I want wonders worked? Anyway it’s 
no good. I can’t fall in love with Marian. I tried 
it but it didn’t go. Her profile is too classical. Let 
me look at your nose, Daphne Joyce. No, sideways. 
That’s right. Good. I knew it. Phidias would 
never have considered your nose. It verges on the 




46 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


retrousse. I knew there was something about you 
that instantly attracted me, I shun perfect profiles. 
They are insidious.” 

“Peter Loomis, you are impossible not to say 
incredible,” reproved Daphne. “You shouldn’t have 
told me you couldn’t fall in love with Marian. And 
certainly you should not have told me you tried to: 
Moreover it isn’t good form to tell a lady her nose 
isn’t perfection. You ought to study a book on 
parlor etiquette now you have so much time on your 
hands.” 

“What good would parlor etiquette do in the 
greenwood? Tell me that, Daphne Joyce. Did 
Rosalind and Orlando consult the encyclopedia to 
find out what to do and say in each other’s society? 
By no means. They went at the thing more directly 
and simply. They no sooner met than they loved.” 

“Couldn’t you find some one at the Inn to fall in 
love with?” interrupted Daphne Joyce. “There must 
be oodles of pretty girls staying there. Anyway 
they wear such delightful clothes that they look 
pretty which is, after all, the main thing.” 

“I thought of that,” admitted Peter. “Being 
basely deserted by you yesterday, I looked about me 
in my non-cabbageous hours and selected a girl—a 
very personable young creature—a tall, brilliant 
brunette—Juno type, sort of. She wore ripping 
clothes as you say, wore ’em like a duchess, too. I 
quite warmed to her.” 

“And did she warm back?” 




PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 47 

# 

“The poor darling had no chance. I had no 
sooner picked her out from the others than her 
fiance arrived from the city for the week end. Inop¬ 
portune brute! There is always somebody extract¬ 
ing all the sweetness and light out of the universe. 
Quick curtain! No flowers. I am afraid, my dear 
Daphne, that I shall have to fall back on you.” 

To this crowning piece of impertinence, Daphne 
retorted that he would much better fall back upon 
labor. 

“But how should I get in touch with labor? 
There’s the rub. It can't expect me to go out and 
seek it joyously. It will have to come in person 
and take me gently by the hand, as it were.” 

“Uncle Robert wants a hired man to help with the 
haying,” remarked Daphne Joyce, maliciously, quite 
positive that Peter Loomis would no more actually 
work than he would jump over the tallest tree in 
the forest. Work and Peter were concepts that it 
would have been difficult, at first glance, for anyone 
to associate. 

Peter’s sleepy blue eyes opened a bit wider, how¬ 
ever, and his cigarette was suspended in mid-air a 
second. 

“Is that a dare?” he inquired. 

“Not at all. Merely a news item,” retorted 
Daphne Joyce. 

“When may I have the pleasure of meeting Uncle 
Robert?” 

“Any Sunday after church. He always shakes 



48 PETER’S BEST SELLER 

hands with strangers then. Did I tell you he was 
a minister?” 

“You did not. However, I am very broad minded. 
I am willing to overlook the handicap of his pro- 
fession. But I don’t wish to wait until Sunday to 
meet Uncle Robert. In fact, I desire to make his 
acquaintance this afternoon before tea.” 

“Why the haste?” 

“Because it is bully haymaking weather and the 
vacancy you mention may be filled before Sunday. 
I wish to hire out to Uncle Robert.” 

“Now I know you are quite, quite mad,” said 
Daphne. 

“No more so than usual, I assure you. Possibly 
even less so. At least I have a method in my mad¬ 
ness. I long to delight Giddy by trying his 
prescription.” 

“Humph!” ejaculated Daphne who had her own 
ideas about the method in Peter's madness. “Have 
you ever made hay, Mr. Loomis?” 

“Miss Joyce, is there anything in my checkered 
—I mean unexchequered—career that I have not 
done? As it happens I was making hay probably 
before you were born. There is nothing I don’t 
know about the gentle art. And in my day the 
farmer’s pretty daughter—or niece as the case may 
be—invariably repaired to the hay held at judicious 
intervals and dispensed cooling beverages.” 

“Uncle Robert is strictly white ribbon.” 

“Even a white ribbon beverage may be more than 







DO YOU THINK UNCLE ROBERT WILL LIKE ME INSTANTLY 

THE WAY YOU DID?' " 














PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 49 


acceptable under certain circumstances. Pray lead 
me without further delay to Uncle Robert.” 

Peter had risen with a suddenness and agility 
somewhat surprising considering the complete inertia 
of the pose he had quitted. 

Daphne rose too, still a bit dubious and not a 
little incredulous. 

“Do you think Uncle Robert will like me in¬ 
stantly the way you did?” Peter was inquiring 
blandly. 

A flicker of amusement flashed in Daphne’s eyes. 

“He will probably consider you more or less de¬ 
mented, even as I did,” she returned promptly, not 
denying the other implication of Peter’s own making. 
“As a matter of fact, however, it is Aunt Lucinda 
upon whom I advise you to concentrate your battery 
of charms. Aunt Lucinda is the power behind the 
throne at our house.” 

“Much obliged for the tip. My prophetic soul 
tells me that Aunt Lucinda and I will be excellent 
friends at first sight. Forward, march, Daphne 
Joyce. Long wave Giddy and his admirable 
prescriptions!” 

“But-” began Daphne. 

“Sh-sh! Block not the mills of the gods with 
your buts. There are no buts in my bright lexicon. 

have an expurgated edition. 

And I am an amiable nut 

Who goes about saying ‘Tut! Tut! 

Don’t argue, my dear, 





50 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


For my mind is quite clear 

And cannot be balked with a but.’ ” 

Daphne giggled irrepressibly and surrendered. 
Of what avail indeed to try to argue with a person 
that could make limericks out of nothing without 
effort or meditation, by some uncanny process akin 
to spontaneous combustion? 

The two fell into step and walked silently side by 
side down the brown-carpeted path while the spruce 
trees bowed low and lifted their green skirts like 
court ladies paying obeisance as the guests passed. 
All about them were spicy, delicious woodland odors, 
the stir and whir and flash of half-seen wings, the 
teeming, myriad complex life of the forest, going 
about its secret business, heedless of alien human 
beings who chanced to cross its domain. 

From the wood they emerged into a meadow, 
fragrant with new-mown hay and alive with the 
songs of bobolinks and song sparrows. In the corner 
there was a rosy patch of pink mallow which the 
mowers’ scythe had spared. From the meadow they 
passed into the road bordered with tall, swaying 
Queen Anne’s lace and the lowlier pink clover, 
haunted by golden bees, giving out a fragrance 
almost intoxicatingly sweet. The road led straight 
to town and all too soon they had left the Queen 
Anne’s lace and the clover behind them and were 
treading uneven brick pavements beneath the wide 
spreading shade of maple trees, past neat, white 
houses, with green blinds, set back in equally neat, 



PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 51 


green yards, just as Daphne had described them, 
lilacs, syringas, tiger lilies, widow’s tears and all. 

At length they reached Market Street, itself, the 
village Broadway, passed Stone’s Drug Store, the. 
Danversville Emporium, and the Olympia Picture 
Palace. At the Citizens’ National Bank, an impres¬ 
sive gray stone building on the corner, they turned 
up Elm Street to the parsonage. 

Daphne was quite aware of and ^somewhat wick¬ 
edly amused at the quantity and quality of the in¬ 
quiring and curious gazes that met and followed 
her and Peter Loomis. Of course they all knew 
Daphne and were interested in her concerns—a little 
too interested, the girl often complained somewhat 
indignantly to her aunt. But nobody in Danvers¬ 
ville had any idea who her tall cavalier might be and 
curiosity was rife, even as Daphne suspected, as to 
where under the sun she had picked him up. 

In a small village the needle point of gossip 
oscillates easily and Daphne was invariably the object 
for conjecture. Remembering her mother, and par¬ 
ticularly remembering her father, Danversville was 
never quite sure of what Daphne herself might do. 
Some of them shook their heads dubiously now 
perceiving Peter and Daphne sauntering uncon¬ 
cernedly along, very much absorbed, apparently, in 
each other’s society. Who was the man? And 
where had Daphne found him? And did Lucinda 
Keene know what was going on? And more espe- 



52 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


dally did Jimmy Danvers know and what would he 
say if he did? 

As it happened, Jimmy Danvers was just emerg¬ 
ing from the bank of which his late father had been 
president and of which he was himself a rising young 
cashier, in season to see Peter and Daphne rounding 
the corner on their way up Elm Street. He caught 
the lilt of Daphne’s laughter as they passed. Daphne 
had not seen young Mr. Danvers, at all. 

Now young Mr. Danvers had just spent a num¬ 
ber of perfectly good, golden hours of sunshine 
endeavoring to trace a few fugitive cents which 
refused to balance as they should in the pages of 
the big ledger, and his temper was already slightly 
acidulated by the process. The acidulation was 
by no means chemically counteracted by the sight of 
Daphne—his Daphne, as Jimmy considered her— 
in the company of a strange man and apparently 
enjoying said company exceedingly. It is scant 
wonder that Jimmy stared after the two with 
resentful gaze. Presently he turned and walked 
with dignity in the other direction, but though he 
was no longer offended by the actual sight of Daphne 
and the stranger, he could still remember all too 
vividly how happy she had looked and how blithely 
her laughter had rung out. Worse still, he could 
not forget how devoted had been the strange young 
man’s manner, how intently and with what evident 
pleasure his eyes had sought Daphne’s lovely, laugh¬ 
ing young face as she lifted it to him. 



PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 53 


Somberly young Mr. Danvers pursued his way 
homeward. His mind had received an unpleasant 
jolt and he did not like mental jolts. He liked 
things to go on serenely as they always had gone. 
Up to now it had never once occurred to him that 
Daphne might like some other man better than 
himself. He knew very well that there was no 
young man in Danversville that she liked better. He 
was never jealous when she danced with other boys 
or skated and canoed with them. Why should he be ? 
He was too sure that he had the inside track and 
that sooner or later Daphne would surrender and 
marry him when she got ready. He had had no 
fear of losing her, not even any desire to hurry 
her in her surrender. He liked her the better and 
found her the more desirable because she was not 
so easy to win. But with the sudden appearance 
of the stranger, into whose admiring eyes Daphne 
smiled, fear and jealousy woke in Jimmy Danvers. 
It is the unknown that we dread. 

By five o'clock, the Reverend Robert Keene dis¬ 
covered, somewhat to his own surprise, that he had 
engaged a young man to help with the haying—a 
somewhat surprising hired man, who was a far 
traveller and an ex-author of note. Just why a 
young man of this sort should be seeking an en¬ 
gagement at haymaking the Reverend Robert did 
not attempt to answer offhand, though he listened 
with a certain respect to the outlining of Giddy’s 
prescription. He was rather a believer in the virtues 



54 PETER S BEST SELLER 


of manual labor, which was one of the reasons why 
he owned and cultivated a considerable acreage even 
though his pastoral duties were heavy enough to 
keep him busy at all seasons. Moreover he had 
taken rather a fancy to this young man of Daphne’s. 
There was something rather appealing, he thought, 
in the man’s tired eyes and quiet, courteous manner, 
the friendly albeit rather elusive smile. The Rev¬ 
erend Robert thought he could afford to dispense 
with recommendations. The man's face was recom¬ 
mendation enough, especially for just a week’s 
engagement at haymaking which, after all, did not 
commit one to much. 

When Peter had gone, having promised to report 
for duty the next day, Daphne perched on the arm 
of her uncle’s chair and, keeping a shrewd eye on her 
aunt for signs of shock, proceeded to relate the sub¬ 
stance, if not all the ramifications, of her two meet¬ 
ings with Peter Loomis. 

“He was so exactly like the De Gustibus,” she said 
in conclusion. “You remember the De Gustibus, 
Uncle Bobbetts? You used to tell me about him. 

"On the edge of the wood 
The De Gustibus stood 
With a gentle, expansible smile.’ 

He was just like that for all the world. I couldn’t 
help making friends with him. Nobody could. You 
couldn’t yourself, Uncle Robert.” 

Aunt Lucinda knew her duty and was not to be 
deflected from it by any talk of crazy animals like 



PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 55 


a De Gustibus. She scolded quite briskly for several 
moments about the horrible things that happened to 
foolish girls who made friends with strange men 
to whom they had not been properly presented. But 
Daphne, her hand tucked contentedly inside her 
uncle’s and privately certain that he was on her side 
in liking Peter Loomis, did not listen any too hard or 
wax very penitent. Anybody could see that Peter 
was all right, queer but perfectly harmless and re¬ 
freshingly unique. And being introduced properly 
wasn’t any safeguard. Herbert Griffith about whom 
all the girls were so crazy and whom Mrs. Judge 
Lane herself had introduced to them all had turned 
out to be a perfectly impossible person, with a wife 
concealed somewhere in the background. You had 
to take chances any way you did it. And what if 
she had met Peter Loomis unconventionally? Most 
of the interesting things in the world had happened 
that way. There had to be Beginnings of one sort 
or another, else you might as well be dead. 

By the time Daphne had completed this mental 
detour she discovered that her aunt had not only 
ceased her lecture but was actually suggesting that 
Peter Loomis come down and live at the parsonage 
while he was doing the haymaking job. It offended 
the good lady’s sense of frugality and fitness that 
he should be spending his nights and his earnings 
at the exorbitant priced inn when there was room 
and to spare at the parsonage. 

“There isn’t any reason in the world why he 



56 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


shouldn’t have the east chamber,” she concluded 
decisively. “He looks sort of peaked, seems to me. 
He has been sick he said, and I don’t believe he 
is getting at all the proper food at the inn. I don’t 
hold with those highfaluting French cooks myself. 
He looks to me as if he needed some plain New 
England victuals. We will have him here, Robert.” 

That settled it so far as the Reverend Robert was 
concerned. If Lucinda had said, “We will have 
Lucifer, here, for the week-end, Robert,” he would 
have probably acquiesced without argument so su¬ 
preme was his faith in her judgment. 

If any of the trio had any qualms about Peter’s 
being asked to descend from the Tower Hill Inn and 
take up his abode in the east chamber it was Daphne. 
She hoped Peter would not think it was her idea. 
She was rather a stern disciplinarian so far as the 
other sex was concerned and did not believe in 
catering to their vanity which flourished only too 
heartily of its own accord without undue encourage¬ 
ment. Besides she was conscious that after all she 
was rather pleased that Peter was to be invited 
though she would never have dreamed of suggest¬ 
ing it, of course. Then there was Jimmy. Jimmy 
would hate Peter’s being here. Daphne’s intuition 
told her that. Not that that mattered so much. 
Jimmy was altogether too proprietorial in his man¬ 
ner of late. Possibly it was well that Peter had 
appeared. Jimmy, no doubt, needed a lesson. And, 
after all, in spite of what she had said to Peter she 



PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 57 


wasn't engaged to Jimmy. Perhaps she never would 
be. She didn’t want to be engaged to anyone for 
a long time yet. She wanted to be free to experi¬ 
ment with life—to have Beginnings if she chose. 

Certainly Peter had no qualms or questions as to 
the eminent desirability of transferring himself and 
his effects to the parsonage, there to enjoy the big, 
cool, clean east chamber, Mrs. Lucinda’s incompar¬ 
able cookery and the privilege of daily listening to 
Daphne’s lovely voice, watching dreams and mis¬ 
chief and tenderness and friendliness play hide and 
seek in her pansy eyes proceeding, if all went as well 
as promised, with a very satisfactory Beginning. 
Oh, yes, Peter was content, as well as may have been, 
with the workings of Providence that week in June. 

It was on the afternoon of Friday, his technically 
lucky day, that Peter began mowing in the south 
meadow, driving a one-horse machine drawn by a 
sorrel colt of sympathetic personality. Peter had 
always liked horses and found Dan very good com¬ 
pany, preferable even to the pines and laurels and 
squirrels and nut hatches, considerably preferable to 
the array of knitters and rockers on the Tower Hill 
Inn veranda, some of whom had been too inclined 
to consider him as a lion who might be induced, if 
properly entreated, to purr friendlily and eat out of 
their hands. Dan seemed to understand and was 
pleasantly responsive to his driver’s occasional out¬ 
bursts of philosophy and poetry. 

The south meadow was an agreeable work shop, 



58 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


bordered as it was by shady trees, filled with bird 
notes and fragrant with the scent of the new mown 
hay as it fell beneath Peter’s wide swathe. In 
the distance there rose a range of low smoke-gray 
hills across which purple cloud shadows passed now 
and then. Overhead the sky was pure lapis lazuli, 
shading down to paler, delicate wild forget-me-not 
shades as it met the hills. The June clouds drifted, 
an endless pageant through the blue appearing now 
as towering castles, now as magnificent chariots 
drawn by colossal white horses, tossing their manes 
royally, now as slow sailing, majestic galleons mak¬ 
ing for some far off haven of dreams, now manifest¬ 
ing themselves as dragons or strange, huge fish or 
lions rampant. Did ever an artist in the world have 
a studio so sumptuous, so prodigal of beauty and on 
so stupendous a scale ? 

Now and then in the course of his mowing, Peter 
came upon great bunches of scarlet strawberries, 
which fell with the grass and he would descend and 
eat them, with a delight born not only of present 
satisfaction to the palate but mingled with the pleas¬ 
ant, cumulative memories of other berries, plucked 
and eaten in other meadows when he w r as much, 
much younger than now and before he had learned 
how little things mattered, long before he ever 
dreamed of being a successful author. Those were 
days which gave back largess of other richer, less 
tangible royalties than those his best sellers brought 
him. He was glad that wild strawberries, at least, 



PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 59 


did not change. They tasted quite as good to him 
today as they had ever tasted, Peter thought grate¬ 
fully, even in those far off days when most things 
of the senses were supremely good. 

Once a sparrow flew up out of the uncut grass 1 
just ahead of Dan’s ambling feet, uttering shrill sig¬ 
nals of distress as it fluttered its wings in an agitated, 
low-circling flight. Peter stopped the colt and dis¬ 
covered a nest with four eggs in it, tiny spheres 
each of which held the promise of glad life and song 
and far flying wings if no accident intervened. 
Carefully Peter led Dan around the space which held 
the nest, leaving a queer patch of upstanding grass 
and a few daisies to mark the spot where a minature 
though very real tragedy had been averted. 

“That would have been a pity, Dan, old man,” 
murmured Peter to the colt. “Lucky Madame 
Chippy was at home to warn us off. We don’t want 
to prevent anybody from being happy, do we?” 

And Dan had flickered one ear knowingly as much 
as to say he agreed with Peter. Or perhaps he 
merely meant to indicate that Peter Loomis was a 
queer one to make such a fuss over a bird’s nest and 
a few unhatched eggs. 

Altogether the afternoon spent in the meadow was 
one of the most agreeable he had experienced in some 
time, not even excepting the afternoon when Daphne 
Joyce had unexpectedly come to him in the gold- 
green wood on a Tuesday. 

And he was hungrier that night as he sat down 



60 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


to Aunt Lucinda’s bountiful board than he remem¬ 
bered being for years and years, perhaps since he 
last made hay, an seon ago, when he was just an 
overgrown, dreamful boy. 

Daphne, in a demure little gown of white cross- 
barred organdy sat behind a rotund brown tea pot 
and poured the fragrant, amber liquid into quaint 
pink-sprigged china cups, which must have been at 
least a hundred years old. Performing this small, 
womanly rite she made a picture, Peter thought, that 
would be hard to beat or to forget. After all he had 
been mistaken. She was quite as harmonious and 
bewitching indoors as she was out under the blue 
sky with the pines for a background, though in an 
entirely different way. Daphne behind her tea pot 
all unconsciously set Peter to dreaming dreams he 
had not conjured these many years of his nomad 
life. 

She spoke but little, he noted. It was one of her 
graces that she could be silent without seeming in 
the least rude or dull. And whether she entered into 
the conversation or not, one did not forget her pres¬ 
ence. Though she scarcely addressed a word to him 
during the meal and he himself confined his con¬ 
versation mostly to her elders he was vividly con¬ 
scious of her nearness and friendliness. 

This being Friday and, according to the schedule, 
prayer meeting night, Peter was left to the solitary 
enjoyment of the porch and his cigarettes and the 
pleasant coolness of the evening. He sat for a time, 



I 

PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 61 

smoking and dreaming and watching the fireflies dart 
hither and thither in the dark. But half after eight 
of the clock found him in bed drowsily listening to 
the whip-poor-wills and the peepers. By the time 
Robert Keene and Lucinda returned, followed some¬ 
what more laggingly by Daphne and Jimmy Danvers, 
he was lost in dreamless sleep, the deepest and most 
refreshing he had known for months. 

Six o’clock the next morning found him wide 
awake however, listening appreciatively to the jubi¬ 
lant morning chorus of cat birds, robins and wrens. 
He dressed quickly and, slipping quietly downstairs 
and out of the house, he took the path which led 
across the field to the little river. The field was 
daisy starred and brimming full with rollicking bob¬ 
olink music. Every grass blade was ashine and 
alert with the joy of life. June and the high tide 
of the year, indeed. Did ever poet phrase it better? 
And could Paradise itself be sweeter than a New 
England June morning among the hills? Peter 
thought not. 

And yet for two weeks he had been sleeping 
heavily through many mornings just as sweet, no 
doubt, as this one. He had wakened weary and un¬ 
interested in life and himself, after the dew was dry 
and the birds scattered. More fool, he, of course! 
But something had changed within him. Life was 
beginning all at once without warning to take on 
zest and shifting, prismatic colors. Once more it 
had become an adventure and a keen delight, a thing 




62 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


worth having and experiencing to the uttermost thrill 
of sense and spirit. 

In a sheltered nook he stripped and slipped into 
his bathing tights. From the “cool, silver shock” of 
the plunge into the river he emerged in a few mo¬ 
ments, exhilarated, amazingly quick in every nerve 
and muscle. He dressed briskly and his step took on 
a buoyancy it had not known for long as he re¬ 
crossed the daisy-starred meadow. A lark flashed 
up almost from under foot, lit on a blossoming spray 
of elder and poured forth such a deluge of “fine, 
careless rapture” that Peter paused to listen smiling. 

“That’s the way to put it,” he applauded. “I feel 
a bit like that myself, little friend. Wish I could 
write a poem as easily as you can spill song and get 
as much of the lyric morning in it as you do, not 
half trying.” 

The meadow lark repeated the burst of ecstasy, 
note for note, with an extra trill at the end, for good 
measure, as if to prove that the earlier rhapsody had 
not been merely an accident but expressed a true 
state of being. Then off he whirred past Peter and 
was joined by another duller-hued bird. Together 
they went speeding off among the daisy tops. 

“Oh, ho!” said Peter. “So that is the why of it. 
I might have known it wasn’t merely the lyric morn¬ 
ing cropping out of you. You fall in with Mrs. 
Giddy’s idea. I see. Ah, well! Chacun a son 
bonheur1” 

A few moments later as he entered Robert Keene’s 



PETER ELECTS MANUAL LABOR 63 


back yard and spread his wet bathing suit on the 
grass he perceived Daphne engaged in ringing a bell 
vigorously under the window of the east chamber. 

“Good morning,” he greeted. “Anybody dead or 
doomed to die?” 

Daphne whirled around and beholding Peter let 
the bell sink to her side with a last feeble clatter and 
clang. She was entirely enveloped in a blue checked 
gingham apron and looked quite as charming as the 
morning Peter and the lark had been celebrating. 

“Peter Loomis! How under the sun was a body 
to know you would be up and out so early? I 
thought you must be out-doing the seven sleepers. 
Breakfast is ready for you.” 

“I am ready for it. Lead me to it. I am hungrier 
than a cannibal in the off season for missionaries.” 

And together they passed into the house through 
the back door, through the kitchen whose mingled 
appetizing odor of coffee and bacon greeted them on 
into the dining room where Uncle Robert and Aunt 
Lucinda were waiting their coming so that they 
might have silent grace together. 



CHAPTER IV 


PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 

Saturday night! The Reverend Robert sat on 
his front porch, enjoying a well-earned rest. To¬ 
morrow’s sermon had received its final conscientious 
polishing and was ready for delivery. Moreover, 
thanks to Peter Loomis’ timely aid, the hay in the 
south meadow was cut and spread for the Sabbath 
sun to ripen. On Monday if the weather held, they 
would get to work on the five acre lot. It was not 
always easy for the Reverend Robert to be a sedu¬ 
lous worker in the Lord’s vineyard and a thrifty 
husbandman of his own broad fields at the same 
time, but tonight he felt justly complacent, as having 
done full duty to both professions. 

His wife, Lucinda, placidly knitting in the creak¬ 
ing rocker near by, shared the Reverened Robert’s 
agreeable consciousness of week day duties faith¬ 
fully performed. The parsonage was in apple-pie 
order. When, indeed, was it ever otherwise? The 
larder was generously stocked, ready for any chance 
visitor the Lord’s day might bring to the ever open 
doors of the parsonage. The Wednesday night 
strawberry festival had, under her capable manage¬ 
ment, netted the Ladies’ Aid Society a substantial 

64 


PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 65 


sum to be divided between the new church carpet and 
the perennial needs of the heathen and the heathens’ 
missionaries. Only yesterday, Melissy Brown had, 
with Mrs. Lucinda’s aid and comfort, safely deliv¬ 
ered herself of twins. Altogether, as these things 
and many others testified, it had been a busy and 
successful week as Lucinda Keene’s weeks were apt 
to be. Lucinda was what is known as an efficient 
person, what the New Englanders call smart. Luck¬ 
ily for all concerned, however, her efficiency had 
never been known to check the natural workings of 
her big, generous, motherly heart or make her lose 
either her sense of humor or her sense of compara¬ 
tive values. 

Into this silence overflowing with virtuous con¬ 
tentment, the Reverend Robert broke with an 
inquiry. 

“My dear, what do you make of that young man ?” 
he asked, his gaze straying to the apple tree in the 
yard, beneath which were Daphne adorning the ham¬ 
mock and Peter Loomis sprawling on the grass, in 
reckless disregard of the possible effects of grass 
green on white flannels and night dews as provoca¬ 
tive of rheumatism. 

Lucinda rocked on gently, knitting and purling on 
to a good stopping point before she answered. 

“He is either a fool or a genius,” she pronounced 
crisply. “Possibly he is both. Some are.” 

“What kind of books does he write?” pursued the 
Reverend Robert, bent on information. 



66 PETER'S BEST SELLER 

Lucinda admitted that she had not read Peter’s 
books. This was unusual. Lucinda had read most 
people’s books at one time or another, though how 
she managed the feat amid the numerous demands of 
her strenuous life was an unsolved enigma. 

“I fancy,” she added, “that they are not my kind 
of books.” 

The Reverend Robert looked slightly disturbed at 
this. Again his gaze wandered to the apple tree and 
his pretty niece. 

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” continued Lucinda, 
answering what he had not said with the dexterity 
of the long married. “They are excellent books of 
their kind I understand. There are several of them 
in the library and you know how particular Susan 
Jenkins is. She even tucks Adam Bede and the 
Scarlet Letter as far out of sight as possible, though 
she doesn’t dare not give them room on the shelves, 
since they are classics. When I said they weren’t 
my kind of books, I merely meant they were not 
primarily love stories.” 

“Ah!” Privately, the Reverend Robert regis¬ 
tered a vow to secure one of Peter’s books at once. 
He and Lucinda had widely differing taste in litera¬ 
ture. Lucinda, being ultra-practical in real life, pre¬ 
ferred her fiction done in rose petals and moonshine 
and true lover’s knots, whereas her spouse, being a 
mild man with a large portion of sentiment in his 
make-up, liked his steeped in gore, fairly smoking 
with unadulterated virility. They met on common 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 67 


ground in Shakespeare and the Bible, Shakespeare 
and the Bible being eminently catholic, done to all 
tastes. 

“So he isn’t strong on love?” mused the Reverend 
Robert. 

“He hasn’t been—up to now,” remarked his wife. 
This time it was her gaze that sought the slim, white- 
clad figure in the hammock. What woman is there 
in the world so sternly practical as not to scent a 
romance when one appears to be budding in her own 
front yard? Daphne was not unattractive to the 
other sex, as her aunt had had occasion to observe 
more than once and Peter Loomis, famous author 
or not, was after all only a man and therefore fairly 
susceptible to feminine graces. Moreover, privately, 
Mrs. Lucinda took no stock whatever in the pre¬ 
scriptions—she had not heard of number four—and 
did not consider it even among the remote probabili¬ 
ties that a mere and exclusive desire for manual 
labor had drawn Peter Loomis to her door. 

“You don’t think it was a mistake to let him come 
here, do you?” persisted the Reverend Robert. “It 
isn’t as if he were an ordinary hired man, you 
know.” 

“It certainly isn’t. On the contrary he is a most 
extraordinary one, I should say. No, I hardly think 
it was a mistake. He knows about Jimmy Danvers 
and in any case he seems quite able to look after 
himself.” 

“He ? I was thinking about Daphne.” 



68 PETER S BEST SELLER 

“So was I. You needn’t worry about Daphne. 
She will keep the young man in his place. She 
doesn’t lose either her head or her heart easily I 
judge.” 

“But he is a new type and novelty always appeals 
to Daphne. I believe there is no young man at all 
like him in Danversville.” 

“In Danversville! I doubt if there are two of 
him in the world. As I said, he is either a fool or 
a genius. Both types are usually unique. I am glad 
he is different. It is time Daphne had something 
different in the line of young men. It will help her 
to decide about Jimmy Danvers.” 

“You don’t consider it decided then?” 

“Nothing is decided where a woman is concerned 
until somebody says a wedding ceremony over her 
and even then it sometimes takes a burial service to 
complete the job. Daphne is tired to death of 
Jimmy.” 

“Jimmy is a good boy,” demurred the Reverend 
Robert mildly. 

“Very good and dull as dish water. It is going 
to take more than goodness to satisfy Daphne. She 
has exaggerated notions about love and marriage. 
She judges the whole subject by the case of her 
parents which she is pleased to consider ideal.” 

The Reverend Robert fell silent at that. Auto¬ 
matically he listened to the plaintive call of the whip- 
poor-will down in the meadow. Perhaps he, too, 
like Daphne, was inclined to consider the case of her 




PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 69 


parents ideal. The romance, the rashness, the per¬ 
fection, the tragic and yet divine brevity of his 
sister’s married life had always captivated his im¬ 
agination. Poor Ruth! Happy Ruth! In those 
brief six years of union with the man she loved, she 
had drained the whole brimming cup of life. She 
had escaped the lees. With her and David, youth 
and passion and beauty, the poetry of existence, had 
never been ground to the dull dust of prose by the 
disillusioning years. The thing had remained 
immortal. 

He came back to the present with a little sigh, 
suddenly conscious ol the creak of his wife’s rocker 
and the sharp click of her flying needles as she indus¬ 
triously knitted his own durable but homely hose. 

“But Lucinda,” he said, “you wouldn’t want 
Daphne to fall in love with a—a Peter Loomis?” 

“What we want or what Daphne wants has little 
to do with it, Robert. We can’t keep Daphne in a 
glass case. She’d smash through if we tried to. 
She is neither a stuffed bird not a dead butterfly. 
She is a young woman very much alive and inclined 
to work things out for herself even if she does get 
hurt in the process, as she very likely will. The 
high-strung, sensitive, spirited kind usually do. My 
point is she ought to see more than one kind of man 
before she settles down. Otherwise there is more 
than likely to be trouble later. This Loomis man 
may send her flying into Jimmy Danvers’ arms or 
in some direction where Jimmy will never overtake 



70 


PETER’S BEST SELLER 


her to his dying day. I don’t pretend to prophesy 
which it will be. We have just got to wait and see 
how it comes out.” 

“But we know so little about him—Mr. Loomis I 
mean.” 

“I’ll keep my eye on him. Never fear. It is one 
reason I wanted him handy. You needn’t worry.” 

“Very well,” assented the Reverend Robert 
docilely. Lucinda’s eye, firmly applied, was a host 
in itself as he well knew. 

Aside from his natural concern about his pretty 
niece, the Reverend Robert was more than pleased 
with Peter Loomis both as a haymaker and a man. 
Wherever and whenever he had learned the art, the 
ex-author had learned it expertly and apparently 
took a good deal of genuine pleasure in the perform¬ 
ance. The Reverend Robert liked this. He liked 
people to do whatever they did with a will and to the 
best of their ability whether the task were great or 
small, a matter of hand or brain. 

He also liked people who talked well and Peter 
talked excellently, was, indeed, remarkably well read 
for a man who had deliberately dodged formal edu¬ 
cational processes and left college at the end of his 
sophomore year because it did not give him what he 
wanted. The Reverend Robert had a scholarly New 
Englander’s wholesome respect for the academic and 
considered a university degree almost as essential 
for a cultivated man as a halo for a saint. Conse¬ 
quently Peter’s avowed dismissal of everything 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 71 


which a degree represented as stale, flat and unprof¬ 
itable, seemed to him startling, if not positively 
iconoclastic. Still, a young man who quoted with 
equal ease and familiarity from Marcus Aurelius 
and Emerson and Shakespeare and Victor Hugo and 
Keats and Tagore and Walt Whitman, who had 
read Plato and Horace, as well as The Divine Com¬ 
edy and Faust, in the original, must somehow have 
permitted culture to seep into his system in spite of 
his disdaining of a sheepskin. At least, so it seemed 
to the Reverend Robert thinking Peter Loomis over 
in rather puzzled fashion. 

The young man also had ideas and the Reverend 
Robert always found people with ideas interesting. 
There were comparatively few of the species, he 
feared, in Danversville. Aside from Lucinda, he 
could have counted those he knew on one hand, and 
most of these, by a curious coincidence, were outside 
of the orthodox fold. He suspected that Peter, him¬ 
self, might be un-orthodox if one probed too deep 
into his cosmic philosophy and he had, therefore,] 
been careful to avoid possible dangerous subjects of 
discussion. It would not do, of course, that Peter 
Loomis should be too un-orthodox—if one knew. 

From all of which it may be gathered that the 
Reverend Robert was considerably taken with his 
odd hired man and well pleased that chance had 
brought the other beneath his roof as well as into 
his hay field. Peter’s society refreshed and stim¬ 
ulated him amazingly. In fact, he was quite sure 



72 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


that the unusual originality and force of tomorrow’s 
sermon were traceable, in no small degree, to his 
having rubbed up against a young man with un¬ 
deniable ideas while he was writing it. One got into 
a rut living always with the same people and thinking 
the same kind of thoughts. It was good to be 
argued with, jerked out of the ruts, even mildly 
shocked, occasionally. Shocked was, on the whole, 
precisely the right word. The Reverend Robert felt 
that he had been gently but no less surely electrified 
by coming in contact with Mr. Loomis, with his 
wide journeyings and even wider reading, his 
astounding theories and flashing illuminations on a 
million diverse themes. 

He was delighted that Lucinda assured him that 
there was no necessity of worrying about Daphne or 
Mr. Loomis, himself, for that matter. All was well 
if Lucinda said so. That was the second article of 
faith with him. He believed in God and after God 
he believed in Lucinda. 

Meanwhile out under the apple tree Peter and 
Daphne were talking, as the Walrus would have 
approved, of many things. They had finished with 
cabbages and, on their way to kings, had paused at 
the J’s, notably Jimmy. 

“Jimmy,” Daphne was announcing at that very 
moment, “Jimmy is peeved.” 

“Indeed?” interrogated Peter, lighting a match 
on the sole of his shoe and applying it to a fresh 
cigarette. “He did not look at all peeved when I 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 73 


saw him earlier in the evening. He was looking 
distinctly pleased with himself, the universe and the 
girl.” 

“The girl!” 

“The girl—a peach of a girl at that, too. I did 
not at all blame your friend for looking like the cat 
that gulped the canary.” 

“Where did you see him? What was he doing? 
How did you know it was Jimmy? What was the 
girl like?” 

Peter held up both hands in remonstrance. 

“Danger! Drive slowly, please. Number one,” 
he counted on his little finger, “in Stone’s drug 
store. Number two, imbibing, through a straw, a 
mud colored liquid that I took to be a chocolate milk 
shake. Number three,” reaching his middle finger, 
“I heard him addressed by his honored cognomen. 
Number four, she was all things desirable in fem¬ 
ininity, adoring and obviously adorable, the big-eyed 
baby doll kind, you know—brunette, pretty as sin, 
petite, Louis Quinze heels, fluffy ruffles, pouty, kiss- 
able lips. Oh, a regular pippin, I assure you! 
Jimmy was in clover. She was making love to him 
like everything. My word! Unless Jimmy watches 
out he’s lost. These baby dolls are frightfully 
determined sometimes.” 

“It must be Angela. Thank goodness, she is here! 
Now perhaps I shall have peace.” 

“And who is Angela that she should purchase 
peace for you?” 



74 


PETER’S BEST SELLER 


“Angela is Jimmy’s cousin several times removed 
and oftener imported to Danversville by Jimmy’s 
mother who has a method in her hospitality. 
Jimmy’s mother has selected Angela for Jimmy’s 
wife. Everybody in town knows that except pos¬ 
sibly Jimmy himself.” 

“And where, then, do you come in ?” 

“I don’t come in if Mrs. Danvers can help it. I 
am a stumbling block, a thorn in the flesh, all the 
time-honored phrases for objects horribly in the 
way and disastrous, I am afraid Jimmy’s unac¬ 
countable and inconvenient inclination to marry me 
is keeping poor Mrs. Danvers awake nights, in 
fact.” 

“But why doesn’t she like you?” puzzled Peter. 
“It would seem to be a very difficult thing to do— 
not to like you.” 

“It is quite, quite easy for Mrs. Danvers, for 
reasons. But that is a long story.” 

“But I have plenty of time. May I not hear it?” 

“I’ll tell it to you in brief though it is not a story 
I tell very often. I don’t need to, indeed. Every 
one knows it. Nobody ever forgets it. My mother 
eloped with an Irish opera singer. My grandfather 
on the paternal side, was a revolutionist, my grand¬ 
mother a Spanish dancer. Both were Catholics, and 
so was my father, after a fashion. All this makes 
me sadly irregular you see. Mrs. Danvers is an 
exaggeratedly regular person and naturally covets 
regularity for Jimmy and Jimmy’s descendants. 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 75 


Besides there is another more personal reason for 
Mrs. Danvers not to like me. My mother was 
engaged to Jimmy’s father once and broke her 
engagement with him to run away with my father. 
I am afraid he—Mr. Danvers, Senior—always loved 
her better than he did his wife. I told you it was 
complicated—Jimmy’s wanting to marry me. It is, 
you see. He would much better marry Angela. 
Mrs. Danvers is entirely right about that.” 

Peter had listened with marked intentness to the 
girl’s story. So this was where Daphne Joyce got 
her exquisite voice, her tinge of foreignness, her 
charm, her rebel spirit, her differentness from the 
rest of Danversville. 

“You didn’t tell me this the other day,” he said, 
when she finished, “though it is most important.” 

“No, I told you it was a story I didn’t tell often. 
Not that I am ashamed of it. On the contrary 
because I am so proud of it. The rest of them think 
it was a dreadful thing my mother did—breaking 
her engagement with one of our first citizens and 
marrying a professional singer against her father’s 
command. I think it was a splendid thing; to make 
love the only test, to go against public opinion, her 
own people and everything. She was only twenty, 
too—younger than I am now by two years. And 
yet she dared to do it,—go off with David Joyce 
though her father told her if she did he would never 
see her again or let her name be spoken in his pres¬ 
ence. Oh, he was a hard old thing—my grandfather 




76 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


—with a will like iron! But hers was stronger— 
because she had found her Great Adventure and was 
brave enough to take it at any cost.” 

“David Joyce!” mused Peter. “Why, child, he 
was one of the greatest tenors of the world. I 
remember hearing him once in Carnegie Hall years 
ago. And he was your father?” 

“Yes, he was my father. I was born in Italy. 
And when I was five, they, my father and mother, 
were both drowned in Lake Magg'iore. People 
speak of it as a tragedy. To me it wasn’t a tragedy 
at all. It was perfect. They had everything life 
could give crowded into those few years. They 
never grew tired of each other or old or unlovely. 
They were young and they loved and they died— 
together. I think it was beautiful.” 

There was a flush in Daphne’s cheeks and a little 
tremor in her voice which betrayed a rarely stirred 
and deep emotion. 

Peter’s hand went out and rested for a moment 
on her hand. Their eyes met. 

“It was beautiful,” he agreed. “Very beautiful. 
You are quite right. It wasn’t a tragedy—just a 
supreme and happy fulfillment. What happened to 
you, poor little lassie alone in a strange land?” 

“A friend of my mother’s took care of me until 
Uncle Robert could come and get me. He was won¬ 
derful, Peter. His father forbade him to go, told 
him he would cast him off even as he had cast off 
my mother if he went and brought me home. But 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 77 


he went just the same and Aunt Lucinda wanted 
him to, though it meant they would never have a 
penny of my grandfather’s money or inherit the old 
place, the other side of the river, on the edge of 
town. They never did get a penny. He kept his 
word to the end and left everything to a nephew 
instead of to his own son. He wouldn’t even see 
Uncle Robert before he died. You can see what a 
lot I have cost them—Uncle Robert and Aunt 
Lucinda. But I don’t believe either of them ever 
think of that. They just—loved me and have been 
loving me ever since.” 

Peter’s gaze wandered to the porch where the 
placid, middle-aged Reverend Robert and his wife 
Lucinda sat. Outwardly, they were rather prosaic 
figures with little of romance attached to them. 
Just meeting them, one would not have thought of 
their having experienced the Great Adventure. Yet 
perhaps they had had it after all. Was any adven¬ 
ture greater than to have counted worldly things as 
nothing by comparison with love? 

“And so you came to Danversville ?” Peter turned 
back to Daphne to ask. “What did Danversville 
think of you?” 

“Danversville never quite accepted me, though it 
tolerated me on Uncle Robert’s account. It always 
suspected me of being an alien. What could you 
expect of a person born in a pagan country like 
Italy, in a city whose streets were water instead of 
brick or dirt?” There was a half-ironical note in 



78 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


the girl’s voice again as she spoke. There was no 
bitter tang to the irony, however, just an amused 
tolerance and appreciation of people who chanced to 
view life from a different slant from her own. 
“Even the children in school used to tease me about 
being a ‘foreigner’ and tried to make me think it was 
a disgrace to have been born outside of America. 
Sometimes they almost persuaded me to believe it— 
not quite though. I knew Italy was beautiful and I 
couldn’t believe it could be bad for anyone to have 
been born in the midst of beauty even if it did make 
me different from the rest of them. I had a feeling 
that I had something the rest of them hadn’t—just 
as they had a feeling they had something that I 
hadn’t. We were both right, of course.” 

“Even then you were something of a philosopher, 
I take it, Daphne Joyce,” smiled Peter, deeply inter¬ 
ested in this retrospect. 

“Not a philosopher, just a—feeler,” she smiled 
back. “I knew things just because I knew them, 
not because I had thought them out. It is queer but 
it was so—even then.” 

“And you weren’t unhappy—being different?” 
probed Peter. 

“Not a bit of it. I am afraid that way down 
underneath, I was sometimes even proud of being 
different. I rather gloried in it, which wasn’t at all 
nice of me, of course. Then there was always 
Jimmy.” 

“Oh, so there was always Jimmy?” 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 79 


‘'Jimmy was my sworn knight. He used to stand 
up for me like Horatio at the bridge when the 
others tried to make me feel badly. I can see him 
now shaking his fist at Tubby Brown, who was 
twice his size, and telling him he would smash his 
head if he didn’t let me alone, that I was just as 
good as he was any day, even if I wasn’t born in 
America. Oh, Jimmy was fine. I’ll never forget 
it—never. He was all the finer because, way down 
in the bottom of his heart, he saw it just as they did, 
that it really wasn’t at all nice to have been born in 
Venice, and to have had a father who was a singer 
instead of a doctor or a lawyer or a banker or even 
a blacksmith. Jimmy was—is—the conservative of 
conservatives, the most regular of the regulars.” 

“And does Jimmy still feel the same about your— 
irregularity?” 

Precisely. That is why it is really fine of him to 
want to marry me in spite of everything. There is 
a queer, dear, absurd, romantic, chivalrous streak in 
Jimmy. Sometimes I think it is the urge of that 
streak, much more than because he is very much in 
love with me, that makes him want to marry me. If 
I marry a James Danvers of Danversville he feels 
that it will regularize me, so to speak, offset the 
disadvantages of my foreign birth and my father’s 
profession and religion, even my mother’s elopement 
with him. He is willing to pay the price and truly it 
is quite a price for him. Don’t smile, Peter. I think 
it is dear of Jimmy—really I do.” 




80 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“Possibly,” admitted Peter. “But, Daphne, my 
child, beware of letting yourself be made too regular. 
It might be disastrous.” 

Daphne was silent. She knew quite as well as 
Peter the risks of regularization. If she married 
Jimmy Danvers of Danversville, she would lose 
something which she had cherished long and deep; 
she whose wings had flown free, in fancy, at least, 
would become a caged bird forever. Marrying 
Jimmy would mean saying good-bye to her Gypsy 
Soul, and Daphne loved her Gypsy Soul better than 
anything in the world. She would be expected to 
occupy, visibly, tangibly and entirely, the red brick 
house on West Chestnut Street which had been for 
generations the home of a James Danvers and the . 
successive brides who took the honored name upon 
themselves. There would be neither time nor place 
there for gypsy dreams. 

Daphne was afraid of the red brick house. Even 
as a child she had always hated it, with a kind of 
premonitory dread. It smothered her, as she used to 
tell her aunt vehemently. She couldn’t stand being 
stared at, so disapprovingly, by the eyes of the dead 
and gone Danvers men and women whose portraits 
hung in heavy, ugly, gold frames upon the wall. 
She couldn’t stand the stiff, rich, damask curtains 
which adorned the high Danvers parlor windows, 
shutting out light and air and something else which 
the little girl Daphne wasn’t able to analyse but 
sensed all the same, something that was perhaps free- 



PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 81 


dom, the right to dream one’s own dreams, to send 
your soul gypsying, even though your body stayed 
within four walls. 

“You didn’t tell me,’’ murmured Peter, “precisely 
why Jimmy was peeved.” 

Daphne came back from her vagrant thoughts. 

“I should think your professional imagination 
would supply the cause,” she remarked. “Naturally 
Jimmy is peeved about you. He doesn’t consider 
you regular either. At any rate, he doesn’t consider 
your being here making hay for Uncle Robert reg¬ 
ular. He cannot imagine anybody’s making hay 
who is not to the manner born. Everything in his 
mind slips into neat little compartments, like a card 
index system. You are obviously not a hired man 
by profession. Therefore there is something emi¬ 
nently suspicious in your attempting to masquerade 
as one, even temporarily. He thinks the prescrip¬ 
tions are poppy cock. I don’t know whether poppy 
cock belongs to the animal or vegetable kingdom, but 
that was the elegant word he used. I am merely 
repeating it whatever it may mean. He insists that 
you are here under false pretenses—that Uncle Rob¬ 
ert shouldn’t have let you come—that you are prob¬ 
ably no better than you should be, if as good. He 
says—well, he says a great many things,” she 
summed up. 

“I see. And do you mind his saying them? I 
really don’t want to be a bally nuisance, you know.” 



82 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


“You are not. Indeed, I think you are going to 
be quite useful—especially to Uncle Robert.” 

“It is a pleasure to be useful,” drawled Peter, 
“especially to Uncle Robert.” 

“Aunt Lucinda is getting fidgety,” announced 
Daphne. “In a very few moments she is going to 
call out ‘Daphne, the grass must be getting very 
damp out there. You had better come up on the 
porch.’ And Daphne being a dutiful child will rise 
and reply, ‘Yes, Aunt Lucinda, I’m coming at once.’ 
It will save a good deal of breath if I forestall her.” 
So saying Daphne rose and Peter, following her 
lead, got to his feet. 

“Daphne Joyce,” he bent over her to say, “Thank 
you for telling me about your mother. It explains 
a good deal about you.” 

Later when she went up to her own room, Daphne 
sat a long time by the window, looking out into the 
night and dreaming. Somehow it seemed a desecra¬ 
tion to sleep through such a heavenly night. Her 
talk with Peter had set her mind travelling on far 
journeys, back into the past, on into the unguessed 
future. The wind gently stirred the curtains and 
brought whiffs of fragrance from the garden be¬ 
neath the window. Through the leaves of the maple 
tree just outside, a star shone through. Daphne, 
giving herself up to the beauty of the dreamful night, 
felt a poignant sense of a presence, near and sweet 
and enfolding. Was it her mother hovering some¬ 
where close about her? Or was it some other pres- 




PETER PERPETRATES A POEM 83 


ence, mysterious, vague, promising something, prom¬ 
ising what? Daphne did not know. But her heart 
beat quicker for its nearness and she felt quiveringly 
alive both in body and spirit. 

Meantime Peter, too, was sleepless. A sudden 
insistent call to create had gotten him out of bed. 
He lit the light, picked up a small, loose-leafed note¬ 
book which was never very far from his hand and 
began to scribble frantically, now and then pausing 
to run his fingers through his hair or to mutter some 
strange, rhythmic incantation. 

At last he came to a halt, lit a cigarette and 
marched to and fro across the east chamber floor 
while he smoked it to its finish. Then he took the 
note-book up in his hand and read aloud softly to 
himself what he had written. 

“Good God, Peter !” he ejaculated at the end. 
“Poetry! At your age! What are we coming to? 
There is only one worse infirmity in the world than 
writing poetry and Pm not sure but you have got 
that, too. Anyway, it is damn good poetry and 
that’s something. Won’t Giddy be surprised?’’ 

And with a grin, Peter extinguished the light and 
went back to bed and to the slumber of which the 
goading imps of creation had deprived him until 
they had their will at his expense. 



CHAPTER V 


JIMMY IS DEFINITELY ELIMINATED 

Peter and Daphne, taking a decorous Sunday 
afternoon stroll in the green wood, brought up, half 
consciously, at the log and stump of the historic 
Beginning, now six days back in the past. 

“I like this spot,” observed Peter. “It teems with 
agreeable associations. Pray, let us sit and loaf and 
invite our souls. You needn’t always sit on the 
stump you know. There is a great deal of room on 
the log—particularly if we sit quite close.” Peter’s 
blue eyes blinked innocently as he made the state¬ 
ment. 

But Daphne promptly and firmly selected the 
stump as her seat, without comment. Peter ar¬ 
ranged himself on the log. 

“As you choose. Possibly you are right. I can 
see you better this way, which is manifestly an 
advantage. Moreover I should undoubtedly have an 
impulse to hold your hand if you were here on the 
log beside me and you never let me hold you hand. 
Or is there a special Sunday dispensation? If 
so-” 

“There is not. I never let young men hold my 
hand.” 


84 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 85 


“ ‘What, never?’ ” challenged Peter grinning. 

“ ‘Well, hardly ever,’ ” Daphne quoted back at 
him with a twinkle in her pansy eyes. 

Then she smoothed her white Sunday flounces, 
folded her hands and gazed at Peter. 

“Don’t,” he implored. 

“Don’t what?” 

“Look so diabolically angelic—as if you might at 
any moment manifest angel wings and fly away to 
bright celestial spheres leaving me bereft.” 

“I am feeling angelic. That is, I am feeling as if 
I would like to be angelic. It is a Sunday sensation.^ 
I quite often have it after listening to one of Uncle 
Robert’s sermons and the sermon was particularly 
good this morning—the best he has preached for a 
long, long time. Unfortunately, however, by Mon¬ 
day I invariably enjoy sin again. My Sunday good¬ 
ness never keeps over night. Besides, just now I 
have a bad conscience.” 

“Pray, what have you been up to now?” inquired 
Peter. He always enjoyed Daphne’s spicy confes¬ 
sions. Just to hear her voice was sheer delight, 
aside from what she said. 

“Almost too many things to remember,” she 
sighed. “I am afraid I behaved very secularly this 
morning.” 

“For instance?” encouraged Peter noticing how 
golden her hair looked as the sun glimmered through 
an opening among the pines and fell upon her bare 
head. Ah, but she was pretty, this Daphne! Pretty 



86 PETER S BEST SELLER 

enough to play havoc with a man’s peace of mind 
unless he were old enough and wise enough to know 
better than to yield to such magic. 

“For instance, I snubbed my worthy but exasper¬ 
ating neighbor, Mira Higgins, very un-Christianly 
when she overtook me on the way to church for the 
express and obvious purpose of pumping me dry as 
to where, how and when I met your serene highness. 
Mira is the champion gossip purveyor of the town 
and what she doesn’t know to our discredit she 
makes up. It is imprudent as well as un-Christian 
to snub her for that reason. No doubt she has a 
horrible tale invented by this time, worse, if possible, 
from the Danversville standpoint, than the truth 
itself. Then, again, if I had wanted to be truly Sab¬ 
batical, I shouldn’t have worn my most becoming 
hat and been secularly conscious all the time of its 
becomingness. You see I am beginning to catch 
your mad habit of telling the truth right out loud,” 
she added with a smile at Peter, a smile that made 
him remember that, after all, he was thirty-eight, at 
least it made him remember that he ought to 
remember it. 

He did not speak and Daphne went on with her 
catalogue of sins. 

“Then all the time that we were saying the Apos¬ 
tle’s Creed I was trying to figure out how Angela— 
Jimmy’s Angela, you know—got that especially 
fetching pannier effect in her gown and when Phi- 
linda Breed’s transformation slipped down over one 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 87 


ear, I nearly ruined the gravity of the choir by 
nudging Belle Travers’ elbow. I might have known 
she would get the giggles. She did and it was I that 
was responsible though Miss Alden, the organist, 
looked daggers of reproof at poor Belle.” 

Peter chuckled. 

“I am afeared for your immortal soul, Daphne 
Joyce. You are indeed in a shocking state. Any¬ 
thing else?” 

“Nothing much but the way I snapped at Jimmy 
when he wanted to walk home with me after church 
and the fact that I got to watching the orioles feed¬ 
ing their babies out in the elm tree and thinking 
about a whole lot of worldly matters while Uncle 
Robert was praying. He prays so nicely too. It is 
a shame not to listen.” 

“Did you think about me?” inquired Peter. 

“Yes. I thought about you. I wished you were 
at church.” 

“In the interests of my salvation or on account of 
the un-Sabbatical becomingness of the hat?” 

“Neither. I wished you were at church because it 
annoyed me to think of you so undeservedly cool and 
peaceful and pagan with your cigarettes and your 
Sunday papers and my hammock, while I had to 
swelter in the choir loft for two hours which is, I 
am convinced, the hottest place in the universe, this 
side of purgatory.” 

“Virtue is its own reward,” observed Peter sen- 
tentiously, lighting a cigarette. 




88 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


“Own and only,” retorted Daphne. “Peter, do 
you feel any signs of wanting to write another 
book?” she demanded with apparent irrelevancy. 
As a matter of fact it had been one of the subjects 
she had dwelt quite fully upon during her uncle’s 
prayer. 

“Nary a sign,” replied Peter cheerfully. “Why 
should I want to write another book when I find 
making hay so satisfactory a pursuit? The only 
fault I find with my present occupation is that, up 
to date, the farmer’s daughter, or niece, as the case 
may be, has not repaired to the hay field with the 
afore-mentioned cooling beverages.” 

“There is an excellent spring in the north-west 
corner of the meadow, under the willows. And 
there is a perfectly good tin cup available on the 
spot. There is no need of your thirsting if you have 
sufficient strength of mind and limb to walk over to 
the north-west corner.” 

“So young and so unfeeling!” sighed Peter re¬ 
proachfully. “I found the spring and the tin cup. 
But there are other thirsts than those of the senses. 
It was the personal—not to say feminine—touch 
that was missing.” 

“Very well. I will try to remember to send 
Betsey down with some of Aunt Lucinda’s root beer 
tomorrow. That will be both personal and feminine. 
Will it do?” 

Betsey was a general village handy woman who 
came to the parsonage on Monday and Tuesday to 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 


89 


wash and iron, and, on Saturday, to help clean up for 
Sunday. She was fat, and forty and black as ebony. 
Peter had seen her only yesterday and was well 
informed as to her extent and hue. He shook his 
head now dolefully at Daphne’s malicious sugges¬ 
tion. 

“It will not do at all. The beer would be accept¬ 
able but Betsey, never. I fear you are far from 
being as angelic as you look, Daphne Joyce.” 

“It is quite possible,” admitted Daphne. “Are 
you sidetracking me purposely? I want to talk 
about your books. Not the ones you are going to 
write—the ones you have written.” 

“Ah-h!” murmured Peter, interested at once. 
“And you have read my books?” 

“Some of them,” said Daphne, not volunteering 
to explain that on Tuesday evening, after meeting 
Peter in the woods in the afternoon, she had pro¬ 
ceeded to the town library and taken out as many of 
Peter’s books as its shelves afforded and had read 
most of these since, at the expense of some midnight 
electricity. 

“And what do you think of them?” 

“They are wonderful in some ways. They make 
you turn the pages very fast to see what is going to 
happen next and the setting is marvellous. Your 
forests and deserts and strange cities are tremen¬ 
dously real, more so, if anything, than your people. 
It is splendid work. I can see that, even if you do 
choose to belittle it. But, Peter, I have a feeling 




90 


PETER S BEST SELLER 


that you have written them from outside in, instead 
of from inside out. You haven’t written yourself 
into them at all.” 

Peter smiled and stooped to rap his cigarette on 
the log, sending gray flecks of ashes down to mingle 
with the pine needles. 

“Quite right, wise, young judge!” he observed. 
“I haven’t written myself into them at all. Why 
should I when the public eats ’em alive, myself 
omitted?” 

“Peter, you make me awfully angry when you talk 
like that,” flashed Daphne. “Here you have the 
magic of words, the wide experience of life and 
human nature and travel—everything to make a 
really great writer—and you stop like a beggar out¬ 
side of the palace when you might claim the throne 
for your own. You can’t write any more books 
because you don’t really want to write any more 
books such as you have been writing. You are tired 
of doing it because it is too easy and you know your¬ 
self, it isn’t the real thing and that you could do the 
real thing if you cared enough. You say your tin 
god has gone. Very well, let him go. He has 
served his purpose. Get yourself a gold or silver 
god to serve instead. You could.” 

Peter’s sleepy blue eyes looked, if possible, 
sleepier than usual, as he listened to this tirade. But 
as a matter of fact, not a word escaped him. He was 
immensely interested, not only in her remarkably 
acute diagnosis of him and his books but in the girl 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 91 


herself, who had the power to go so straight and 
true to the heart of things, not by any tedious 
reasoning processes but by the swift, unerring leap 
of her intuition, her warm human sympathy and 
understanding. 

“Serving golden gods is expensive,” he drawled 
aloud. “It means hard work, physical and spiritual 
exhaustion, going down to hell as well as up to 
heaven. Is it worth the price? Would it be worth 
it, I mean, supposing I had the power, as you 
assume? Isn’t it more sensible to bt comfortable 
and lazy and spend the rest of my life harmlessly 
enjoying the fruit of my ill-gotten gains?” 

If he were testing her, she sprang to meet his 
challenge undaunted. 

“Peter Loomis! You ought to be ashamed to talk 
of comfort. You haven’t earned the right to be 
comfortable—yet. It is your business to work. 
Worth while ? Is there anything more worth while 
in the world than to write books, books that make 
people laugh and cry and dream big dreams and 
think and hope and believe, to make them forget 
their million, hateful little worries and troubles and 
their big, lonely, terrible heartaches, to give them 
something to live by and to die by? What if it is 
exhausting? If I had your gift I’d use it—write a 
book the world couldn’t forget—a great book.” 

In the intensity of her conviction Daphne let her¬ 
self go as she seldom did. She bared her quick, 
eager young soul for a moment. Her eyes were 



92 


PETER’S REST SELLER 


shining, her cheeks deeply flushed. She believed in 
every word she was saying, believed that to write a 
great book was a great thing and that the sleepy-eyed 
man opposite her on the log could do it if he would 
—if he cared enough for the world of human beings. 

Peter studied the earnest, lovely young face with 
its swift, fascinating play of emotions. When he 
spoke next it was as seriously as she was speaking 
herself. 

“I wish I could write a book like that, Daphne 
Joyce. It is great to know that you think I could. 
Would it make you happy—to have me write a great 
book?” 

“You know it would, Peter. I should like it 
better than anything I can think of this minute.” 

“It shall be done.” 

Daphne frowned. 

“Don’t be flippant, Peter. Pm in earnest.” 

“I know it. So am I. But, my dear, a book like 
that—a great book—can’t be done by merely willing 
it. It has to find you out, grip you with the mighty 
grip of ten giants. I am not sure I haven’t lost th£ 
power to be gripped like that. Lord knows I’d be 
glad to feel the thing again if I could!” He fell 
silent a moment, then he looked up at Daphne with 
a queer, little twinkle in his eyes. “I am thinking 
of starting on a trip around the world to get myself 
in a hospitable frame of mind. Will you come along 
with me?” 

Daphne looked up startled, a little displeased, yet 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 


93 


obviously a bit fascinated by Peter’s sudden proposi¬ 
tion. The very words “around the world” set her 
pulses dancing, her eyes ashine. Hers was a Gypsy 
Soul, as has been said. She shook her head at Peter. 

“You are a very rash man, Peter Loomis. I am 
crazy to travel—to go and go and go. What if I 
accepted your suggestion?” 

Peter deliberately lit another cigarette, watching 
the girl’s face the while, with lazy-looking eyes 
which nevertheless saw most things. 

“Pm game,” he drawled. “Pd even go so far as 
to undertake the risks of matrimony as a prelimi¬ 
nary, if necessary.” 

Daphne frowned. 

“Don’t, Peter. You can joke about a good many 
things and I’ll listen to you. But you can’t joke 
about marriage. I told you I believed in the Great 
Adventure.’ 

“Well?” drawled Peter. “Wouldn’t going round 
the world be something of a Great Adventure—even 
doing it with me?” 

“No,” said Daphne. “Not with the prime ingre¬ 
dient absent.” 

“I see,” murmured Peter. “And you think it 
would be too great an effort to mutually manage— 
the prime ingredient?” he pursued. 

“I certainly do,” said Daphne decidedly. “Don’t 
mix things, Peter. You don’t really want to marry 
me, not the least in the world, though just for a 



94 


PETER’S BEST SELLER 


moment, maybe, you thought you could go through 
with it.” 

“Possibly you are right,” agreed Peter, in much 
the same tone of tranquil resignation that he had 
accepted her preference for the stump rather than 
the log, a little while before. “It merely occurred to 
me in passing that we could have rather a jolly time 
together and that you would be an eminently satis¬ 
factory travelling companion, just as it struck me a 
few moments ago that you would make an excep¬ 
tionally desirable stimulus to the production of 
literature in the home.” 

Daphne uttered an inarticulate exclamation of 
wrath. 

“Exactly. That is all you know about the Great 
Adventure, Peter Loomis. I certainly don’t want to 
be married as an eminently satisfactory travelling 
companion nor yet as an exceptionally desirable 
stimulus to the production of literature. And I 

don’t want to marry you anyway although-” 

She paused and an imp of irrepressible mischief 
danced in her eyes, “I should like to go round the 
world with you.” 

“Come on without marrying me, then? It has 
been done,” remarked Peter imperturbably. “What 
was it Mr. Henry said—Patrick not O.—Life is too 
dear and love too sweet to be purchased at the price 
of chains and slavery?” 

“Peter, don’t be outrageous. Patrick didn’t say 
anything of the sort and you know it. Moreover I 




JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 95 


have Puritan ancestors as well as Revolutionary ones. 

I fear you will have to go on your journey alone for 
all of me. And long before you are back, I shall 
probably be married—perhaps to Jimmy Danvers.” 

“Don’t, I beg of you,” urged Peter, “and most 
particularly not to Jimmy Danvers.” 

“Why not? I mean why particularly not?” 

“Because, my dear Daphne, from all indications 
you would lead him the devil of a life.” 

Daphne looked startled. She was prepared for 
Peter to propound that Jimmy was not the man for 
her. She was not prepared for his opinion that she 
was not the girl for Jimmy. 

“What makes you think that?” she asked. 

“Because I fancy that there is more of you, 
Daphne Joyce, than Jimmy can possibly use. And 
when either party of the matrimonial contract has 
unutilized margins of personality, there is bound to 
be the makin’s of trouble. Either the margins dry 
up and shrivel away from want of use, which is one 
kind of a tragedy, or else they keep growing and 
operating and then there is a smash-up, all but in¬ 
evitable, just around the corner. I have an idea you 
wouldn’t let your margins atrophy. You’d keep ’em 
up and doing and—well, there’d be the devil to pay 
—for you—but more particularly for Jimmy.” 

Daphne was silent. Was Peter right? If she 
married Jimmy with reservations, as she now real¬ 
ized with some compunction she had been meaning 
to, if at all, would she make him happy? Hadn’t she 



96 


PETER S REST SELLER 


been thinking rather selfishly all along about her 
own happiness only? She had assumed that Jimmy 
would be getting all he deserved and possibly more 
by marrying her, even if he did not possess all of 
her. But now it was suddenly borne in upon her 
that this might not be fair at all. Angela would 
give him all there was of her to give and if there 
wasn’t quite as much of her to give as there was of 
herself, all vanity aside, why then perhaps it would 
be all the happier for Jimmy. All at once the mist 
cleared and Daphne saw things for the first time, 
straight and clean and true. She must never, never 
let herself marry Jimmy, for his sake quite as much 
as for her own. 

‘‘Well?” said Peter at length breaking into her 
abstraction. “What is the verdict?” 

Daphne came back with a dubious smile. 

“The verdict is that we have to fly back to town 
this instant. Jimmy is coming at five and if he gets 
there before we do he is going to be in a very bad 
temper by the time we arrive. Hurry, if you are 
coming with me.” 

Daphne rose from her stump and Peter had no 
clue to the interesting phenomenon that while she 
had sat there Jimmy Danvers had been at last defi¬ 
nitely eliminated. 

In spite of her conscientious haste, Jimmy had 
arrived in advance and was sitting on the porch, 
glum and injured, in the society of the Reverend 





7 7 


'‘daphne perched on the rail opposite him 











JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 


97 


Robert, who was doing his unsuccessful best to 
entertain him. 

As soon as Peter and Daphne came on the scene 
Uncle Robert discreetly beat a retreat and after the 
ceremony of introduction was over Peter followed 
him almost at once. Mr. Danvers submitted to the 
ceremony with obvious ill grace, plainly considering 
it a case of adding insult to injury that he should be 
obliged to meet this man who was the ruination of 
his peace of mind and temper. 

The door had hardly closed upon Peter before 
Mr. Danvers’ indignation commenced to spatter and 
spill over, like fat on the fire. 

“Daphne, where have you been with that man ?” 
he demanded sharply. 

Daphne’s eyebrows went up and a spark of 
answering wrath kindled in her brown eyes. She 
was not a person that took kindly to reproof, espe¬ 
cially from young males, unauthorized to act as her 
mentor. 

“In the woods,’’ she answered. “Any objections? 
Sit down, Jimmy. You may as well, even if you are 
going to be disagreeable.’’ 

Jimmy sat and Daphne perched on the rail oppo¬ 
site him, rebellion crackling all over her like electric 
vibrations. 

“Yes, I have,” announced Jimmy apropos of the 
objections. “I hate to have you running around 
with him like that. The whole town is talking about 



98 PETER S BEST SELLER 


it. They say you were never even introduced to 
him, that you just picked him up somewhere.” 

“What a charming and graceful phrase!” mur¬ 
mured Daphne. “So I picked him up, did I? Very 
well, I did. I picked him up in the woods—if you 
must know—the same woods where we were this 
afternoon, in fact. May I ask if it is any of Dan- 
versville’s business or yours, for that matter, if 
Uncle Robert and Aunt Lucinda approve?” 

“It certainly is my business,” retorted Jimmy 
with dignity. “I can’t have the girl I am going to 
marry getting herself made the talk of the town. 
Besides your aunt and uncle haven’t any right to 
approve. It is outrageous.” 

“Why don’t you take up the matter with Uncle 
Robert and Aunt Lucinda?” inquired Daphne 
blandly. “Aunt Lucinda is right inside. It will only 
take a minute to call her. Shall I?” 

Jimmy looked worried. He was considerably 
afraid of Lucinda Keene and her sharp eyes and 
sharper tongue. He hadn’t the slightest desire to 
express in person his opinion that she and her hus¬ 
band were behaving “outrageously” in permitting 
their niece to “run about” with Peter Loomis to the 
talk of the town. 

“No, I can’t say anything to her, of course. She 
wouldn’t like it. And anyway it is between you and 
me. Daphne, can’t you see how I feel?” reproach¬ 
fully. “What do you really know about Mr. 
Loomis?” 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 99 


“Enough to know that he is the most interesting 
man I ever met.” 

So saying Daphne descended from her perch and 
seating herself in the chair next to Jimmy’s prepared! 
to be as disagreeable as he was, if necessary. 

“Does he make love to you?” sternly from Mr. 
Danvers. 

Daphne considered conscientiously. 

“No,” she said after a second, “I don’t believe 
you would call it making love exactly.” She smiled 
to herself as she made the statement. What would 
Jimmy have said, she wondered, if he knew that 
Peter had proposed, Peter fashion, had, at any rate, 
invited her to go round the world with him. But it 
was quite true that Peter didn’t exactly make love 
even when he proposed. 

Jimmy uttered a spluttering exclamation and 
whirled around on her angrily. 

“Good Heavens!” he exploded. “What do you 
call not making love to you exactly. Either he 
makes love to you or he doesn’t. Which is it?” 

“Which it is, is distinctly not your concern,” re¬ 
torted Daphne quite as exasperated as Jimmy him¬ 
self by now. “I don’t like being rude, Jimmy, and 
you are making me horribly rude. Do be sensible 
and stop behaving as if you owned me. We could 
be such pleasant friends if you only would.” 

“I don’t want to be pleasant friends. I want to 
marry you. I love you.” 




100 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


The hurt note in his boyish voice melted Daphne’s 
wrath, stirred the eternal motherliness within her. 

“I am sorry, Jimmy,” she said gently. “Truly I 
am. I don’t want to be horrid or to hurt you. You 
have always been such a splendid friend—so good to 
me. But, Jimmy, you know I can’t marry you so 
long as your mother feels the way she does. And 
anyway I don’t want to get married—not for a long 
time yet. And I don’t think I’ll ever marry anybody 
in Danversville. I don’t really belong here—you 
know yourself I don’t.” 

“But I wanted to make you belong,” wistfully, 
“It is what I have wanted ever since we were 
children.” 

“I know. It is dear of you and I appreciate it, 
really I do. But it isn’t any use. You and I are 
two different kind of people. We can’t help it but 
we are and even love couldn’t bridge the different¬ 
ness. And Jimmy, I don’t love you—not the real 
way—the way my mother loved my father. I never 
shall. And I can’t help feeling that you don’t love 
me that way either, though maybe you do. Anyway 
we have to face the thing straight even if it is hard. 

I don’t want to make a mistake and have to hurt you 
later, as my mother had to hurt your father. And 
that is what would happen if I said I would marry 
you knowing I didn’t love you enough and never 
would.” 

“Daphne, you never talked like that before. You 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 101 


have always let me hope a little bit, though you held 
me off. But now you talk as if you were sure.” 

“I am sure, Jimmy. I’m sorry. I should have 
understood before and not let you hope even the little 
bit. But I didn’t know myself until now.” 

“Why do you know now when you didn’t Wed¬ 
nesday?” he demanded sternly. “I’ll tell you why. 
It is because you are losing your head over this 
Loomis fellow. And he’ll go away in a few days 
and forget all about you and then where will you 
be?’’ Jimmy rose and towered over her threaten- 
ingly. 

Daphne’s cheeks flamed hotly and she rose also. 

“You haven’t any right to say things like that or 
think them,’’ she stormed. “I’m not losing my head 
over Peter Loomis or any other man. But it is true 
that knowing him is what has made me sure all of 
a sudden about you. You can make what you like 
of that. I don’t care what you think as long as you 
get it in your head that I am not going to marry 
you—ever—ever—ever, so there!” And having 
hurled her fiery ultimatum into Jimmy Danvers’ 
astonished face, she swept past him into the house 
leaving him to assimilate his rebuff as best he might. 

For a moment he stared after her, petrified. Then 
it came to him with arid certainty that the elusive, 
bitter-sweet thing he had been pleased to consider 
an engagement between himself and Daphne Joyce 
was over and done with. Spilled wine, shattered 
goblet, the end of a dream! 




102 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Gathering his scattered wits he descended the 
steps bearing himself as a blind man who feels 
rather than sees his path. Poor Jimmy! His 
anguish was genuine enough if not deep-rooted. 
How was he to guess that it was his vanity rather 
than his affection that had received a smashing 
blow? How was he to know that it had been love 
rather than Daphne Joyce that he had loved so im¬ 
mensely? How should any of us blind, blundering 
humans dream what we must look like to the gods? 
We only know what we look like to ourselves and 
young James Danvers looked to himself a broken¬ 
hearted man as he walked away from the parsonage 
that June afternoon. 

Daphne Joyce, flitting about the dining room in 
the process of setting the table for tea, was conscious 
of a curious whirl of emotions going on inside her. 
She was sorry for Jimmy—very sorry, now that her 
anger had abated. But she was also unspeakably 
relieved that she had at last had the courage to dis¬ 
miss him from her life, the wisdom to perceive the 
necessity for such dismissal, for his sake as well as 
her own. She knew she would miss him, miss him 
very much perhaps, especially after Peter went. 
Jimmy had become rather a habit. Nevertheless this 
knowledge brought with it a compensating thrill of 
freedom. The shadow of the red brick house on 
West Chestnut Street had lifted forever from the 
path. Never again would she dream bad dreams in 
which the alien damask curtains and the forbidding 



JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 103 


rows of Danvers family portraits should hover 
above her head like grim spectres. She was free. 

And it was Peter Loomis who had freed her. 
Had he not come when he did she might have sur¬ 
rendered, let herself be made regular, given up her 
dream of the Great Adventure. Peter had crystal¬ 
lized her vague forebodings, made her see things 
clear. 

Thinking of Peter brought back the fires into her 
cheeks which Jimmy’s accusation had lit. It was a 
ridiculous idea of Jimmy’s. She was not in the least 
in love with Peter. She had told that to Peter, him¬ 
self, only this afternoon in the woods. Still it would 
have been rather wonderful to have gone round the 
world with him. Then Daphne frowned for letting 
herself think such unthinkable thoughts and looked 
up to perceive Aunt Lucinda just coming into the 
room, bearing a distinguished looking chocolate cake. 

“Isn’t Jimmy staying to supper?’’ inquired Lu¬ 
cinda. “Your uncle said he was here.” 

“No,” said Daphne. “Jimmy isn’t staying. I 
don’t think he is likely to be here again for some 
time.” She stooped to arrange the orange hued 
nasturtiums in the glass bowl in the center of the 
table then added, “You and Uncle Robert wouldn’t 
mind very much, would you, if I didn’t marry 
Jimmy after all?” 

“Does that mean you have sent him packing?” 
demanded her aunt, setting down the cake and look¬ 
ing very intently at her pretty niece. 



104 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Daphne looked up and, meeting the intent gaze, 
flushed a little. 

“It does,” she said. 

“Definitely and without recall or referendum?” 
persisted Aunt Lucinda. 

“Definitely,” declared Daphne. 

“Well, thank the Lord!” ejaculated the older 
woman. “If you had decided on Jimmy, my dear, I 
wouldn’t have said a word. It was your affair, but 
between you and me and the pepper pot, I’d hate to 
be that young man’s aunt-in-law and I'd hate about 
ten times worse to have you take on Sophia Danvers 
as a mother-in-law.” 

Daphne came over and dropped a rare kiss on her 
aunt’s cheek. 

“You are wonderful, Aunt Lucinda,” she said. 
“How do you ever manage to keep hands off the 
way you do? Up to this minute I hadn’t the remot¬ 
est idea whether or not you wanted me to marry 
Jimmy. I am glad you aren’t going to be disap¬ 
pointed because—it can’t be done.” 

“H-mp!” sniffed Mrs. Lucinda. “I’d have been 
disappointed in you if you had decided to put up 
with a Jimmy Danvers after you had known a man 
like your uncle. Go call the men folks, will you? 
Supper is ready. They are in the library arguing as 
to whether they were ever monkeys or not—as if it 
mattered at this late date. Anyway it amuses your 
uncle and I am always glad to have him amused. He 




JIMMY IS ELIMINATED 105 


doesn’t get any too much amusement in Danversville. 
This Peter person is rather a godsend.” 

“He is indeed,” thought Daphne, remembering 
Peter’s share in clarifying her own rather difficult 
situation in regard to Jimmy Danvers and her 
pseudo-engagement. 

“Of course, God isn’t finished either,” Peter was 
remarking as she reached the library. “He is in the 
process of being perfected too. He can’t be done 
until we are finished and sometimes we must seem 
mighty slow and stupid to Him, taking so many 
thousands of years to learn such very simple, funda¬ 
mental truths as the universe is founded on, and 
which He has known all the time. God in man and 
man in God, perfect together—that is the far off, 
divine event—too far it looks just now, with the 
possibility of war in the air and men making brute 
beasts of themselves for greed and hate and 
passion.” 

Perceiving Daphne, the Reverend Robert made a 
sign to Peter to cease his exposition of this unortho¬ 
dox God of his. Daphne’s faith in the good, old- 
fashioned “Almighty King, all glorious above,” must 
not be blown upon by the shifting winds of 
heterodoxy. 

The Reverend Robert had not the slightest idea 
that his niece Daphne, at twenty-two, having ab¬ 
sorbed a large mass of Browning and Spencer and 
Darwin and Drummond and, worse still, having 
latterly browsed at will and with immense interest 




106 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


in the far more un-orthodox and iconoclastic fields 
of Mr. Wells and a certain amazing, topsy-turvy 
philosopher, one G. B. S., was far from being as 
safely and sanely encased in orthodoxy as he fondly 
imagined. Other times, other manners and neces¬ 
sarily other faiths! Daphne, like Peter Loomis, 
was of the new era and though she had not thought 
so deep and far as Peter, having had much less 
time to do so, her eyes were wide open to lights 
Robert Keene’s generation would scarcely have 
dared to look upon lest looking they be blasted. 

Out of the old, the new is born. This is the law 
of life. Each new age has its own new gift to lay 
upon the world’s altars which “slope through dark¬ 
ness up to God.’’ And God is greater than any man¬ 
made creed has yet encompassed in its reaches. Yet 
to seek Him unceasing is the divine instinct of man, 
the spark unquenchable which makes him one with 
the Immortal. 



CHAPTER VI 


PETER GOES TO CHURCH 

Jimmy Danvers walked home through the sum¬ 
mer afternoon dusk as one in a trance. Familiar 
faces and forms went by him and though he ex¬ 
changed perfunctory greetings he could not have 
told anybody afterward to whom he had spoken. 
He was concentrating all his mental powers in the 
effort to realize that all was over—as the saying 
goes—between him and Daphne Joyce. It was a 
fact too depressing to be easily comprehended. 

Up to now things had invariably moved fairly 
smoothly for young Mr. Danvers. There had been 
practically no pulling against the current. He had 
always gone with the stream. Few things that 
seemed desirable to him had been denied him. It 
had never occurred to him that this one thing that 
he desired more than anything else could possibly be 
marked unattainable. He was no vainer than the 
average young man but he could not help knowing 
that he was considered a “good catch” locally and 
that there was more than one young lady, not only 
in Danversville, but at large in the county, who 
would have been more than willing to consider 
favorably what Daphne had dallied with and finally 
deliberately rejected. 

107 


108 PETER S REST SELLER 


Jimmy had never regarded his mother’s objection 
to the match as insuperable, thought it, indeed, far 
less serious an obstacle in the path than Daphne 
considered it. He understood his mother’s view¬ 
point, of course. He was conservative himself but 
he could not imagine anybody failing to perceive 
that Daphne surpassed all objections and reserva¬ 
tions. Moreover it was quite clear that if Daphne 
married him, her identity as Ruth Keene’s daughter 
would be merged in her identity as the wife of 
James Danvers of Danversville, no longer the sub¬ 
ject of question or alien in any way. He had been 
so sure that his mother would come round to his 
way of thinking that he had been patient with her 
opposition just as, sure of his ultimate winning of 
Daphne, he had been patient with her elusiveness, 
her keeping him at a provoking distance, even though 
she admitted she liked him better than any other 
young man in town. 

For nearly two years now he had been assuming 
proprietorial airs where Daphne was concerned, so 
definitely proprietorial, indeed, that he was successful 
in warding off* for the most part the attentions of 
other' young males, who also saw that Daphne 
Joyce was one of the prettiest and most charming 
girls in the village. It had become tacitly accepted 
that it would be Jimmy who would walk home from 
evening church service and prayer meeting with 
Daphne, week in, week out; that it would be Jimmy 
who would escort her to band concerts and straw- 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 109 

berry festivals and church socials and Chautauqua 
lectures; Jimmy who would claim the major share of 
her dances at parties, sit beside her on sleighrides. 
It was with Jimmy that she went canoeing down the 
river Saturday afternoons and moonlight evenings, 
with Jimmie that she went to the movies, Jimmy 
that was privileged to spend long hours of his 
young life occupying the parsonage porch or the 
rustic seat under the lilac bushes and to take Sunday 
tea all but invariably with the family. 

Scant wonder that Jimmy had come to feel, as 
most of the town felt, that his marriage with Daphne 
was a foregone conclusion and did not suspect at 
all, that for Daphne Joyce, it was nothing of the 
sort, that she had long been restive under the vague 
bondage of their quasi-engagement, that she daily 
shrank more and more from the shadow of the red 
brick house as it seemed to draw closer to her, 
encroach more and more upon the sovereign right 
of her own self-possession. 

Reaching home Jimmy had intended to go im¬ 
mediately upstairs to his own room to nurse his 
broken heart. But as luck would have it, the dining 
room door stood open as he passed it. His mother, 
erect, unsmiling in her stiff Sunday black silk was 
beyond his range of vision. What he did see was 
pretty Angela Gaylord in a white dress behind a 
bowl of roses and a lemon meringue pie. The 
destiny of nations has ere this been altered for a less 
fateful combination. Suffice it to say that young 



110 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


Mr. Danvers suffered a swift reaction, flung his 
hat upon the oak settle in the hall and entered the 
dining room where the two women sat at table. ■ 

Both looked up at his entrance. Both were glad 
to see him though they manifested their pleasure 
very differently. Angela’s eyes dropped, after that 
first glad flash of greeting and her cheeks took on 
a deeper color. She did not speak at all and yet, 
as maidens may, conveyed a whole volume of mean¬ 
ing in her silence. 

“I supposed you were having tea at the parsonage 
or we would have waited. I am afraid everything 
is quite cold.” Mrs. Danvers spoke resignedly as 
one accustomed to having things go amiss. 

Jimmy murmured that it didn’t matter, that he 
wasn’t at all hungry, and then proceeded to give 
undivided attention to the viands spread before 
him, making out, it must be admitted, a very fair 
meal considering the state of broken-heartedness he 
was enduring. 

Angela and Mrs. Danvers occasionally exchanged 
brief platitudes across the table but both were plainly 
depressed and oppressed by the heavy mood of 
the lord of the household. The meal was not a 
joyous social function any way you looked at it. 

It was not until Jimmy had consumed a generous 
segment of his favorite lemon meringue pie that 
his mother ventured to again address, him, this time 
announcing plaintively that her neuralgia was worse. 
Jimmy wiped his mouth and observed with mechan- 



PETEK GOES TO CHURCH 111 


ical politeness that he was sorry. Was there any¬ 
thing he could do ? 

No, there was nothing any one could do. That 
was the worst of neuralgia. One just had to bear it. 

“I rubbed her head with eau de cologne,” an¬ 
nounced Angela. 

Mrs. Danvers relaxed her martyred air one degree 
and acknowledged that Angela had done everything 
possible for her comfort, adding gloomily that it was 
lucky somebody was at home who cared whether she 
was sick or not. 

Jimmy wriggled under this indirect shaft. He 
wished his mother would buck up a bit and not 
always be so infernally lugubrious. It got on a 
fellow’s nerves when he wasn’t feeling any too 
hilarious himself. 

“I am sorry, Mother,” he said again, dutifully. 
“I didn’t know you were feeling ill.” 

“No, I never spoil the pleasure of others by intrud¬ 
ing my own sufferings upon them. It is not my way. 
I merely mention the fact .now because I want you 
to take Angela to church now that you are here. 
I don’t feel equal to the effort and I don’t want 
her to go alone.” 

There was a pregnant silence. Angela’s gaze 
dropped demurely again. Jimmy’s eyes also were 
downcast. His mother’s suggestion was curiously 
inopportune, he thought. He had intended to spend 
the evening writing a long letter to Daphne, not in 
crude anger or reproach but in a strain of magnani- 



112 PETER S BEST SELLER 


mous pleading that she think well before she throw 
aside a tried and true friend for a stranger about 
whom she knew nothing and who would soon be 
gone out of her life forever. It was to have been 
quite a masterpiece—simple, dignified, profoundly 
moving—calculated to wiring Daphne’s fickle heart 
with remorse and, freeing her from her mad infatu¬ 
ation for the other man, to send her penitently 
to Jimmy’s own feet, metaphorically, of course. 
Even Jimmy Danvers could not imagine Daphne 
Joyce literally grovelling at any man’s feet. But 
here w r as his mother asking him to go to church 
with Angela, which meant sitting up in front where 
he could see Daphne in her choir loft every minute. 
It was the refinement of torture. He could not go 
through with it. He must make some excuse. It 
was too much to expect of any man. 

The silence was sufficiently long to be awdcward. 
Mrs. Danvers’ countenance took on a shade of addi¬ 
tional acidity. Angela drew a little fluttering breath, 
hardly so big as a sigh, and flung herself nobly into 
the breach. 

“Oh, no, Aunt Sophia,” she protested. “Jimmy 
mustn’t bother about me. I can go to church per¬ 
fectly well by myself.” 

The little fluttering breath had attracted Jimmy’s 
attention however. Suddenly aware of Angela with 
the pretty color fluctuating in her cheeks, it occurred 
to him that he had never fully appreciated how sweet 
she was, how gentle and lovable and womanly. 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 113 


Possibly he meant feminine, but womanly was what 
he called it. And what a pleasant voice she had, like 
a cooing dove’s! He became rather pleased with 
himself for thinking of the comparison. His mind 
did not run to metaphors naturally. Angela had in¬ 
spired him somehow. 

“You will do nothing of the sort,” he heard him¬ 
self declaring out loud, with rather surprising con¬ 
viction and heartiness. “Of course, I will go with 
you. That is what big men are for—to keep away 
bug-a-boos from nice little girls like you.” 

His smile was fraternal, almost paternal, but it 
was a smile all the same and the atmosphere of the 
room was perceptibly warmed and brightened by its 
appearance. Jimmy himself felt better for having 
yielded to his kindly impulses toward pretty Angela. 
It was balm to his wounded vanity to feel that some¬ 
body needed his man’s strength and companionship, 
it helped a little to heal the hurt that Daphne had 
made—Daphne who scorned his protection and 
would none of him. 

Angela smiled back happily with her eyes as well 
as her full red lips. 

“That is sweet of you, Jimmy,” she cooed. “I’d 
love to have you, of course. But—aren’t you going 
with Daphne?” 

There was another mighty silence. Jimmy was 
torn between an impulse to announce with bitter 
dignity that neither now nor at any other time would 
he be going anywhere with Daphne again and his 



114 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


even stronger feeling that he could not face the 
humiliation of a full confession just now. He 
decided to pass the matter off with a light touch. 

“No, I wasn't going with Daphne tonight," he 
answered casually, as one who mentions a matter 
of little moment in passing. 

But mothers have uncanny power of imagination. 
Mrs. Danvers lifted her face and, looking very 
intently at her son, read as clearly as if he had told 
her the whole truth that miraculously, through some 
process or other the affair between James and 
Daphne Joyce was finished. She was released from 
the nightmare which had haunted her so long. 

So it came about that instead of staying at home 
and composing his masterpiece, Jimmy Danvers went 
strolling churchward with pretty Angela on his arm. 
Of course, he did not for a moment forget that he 
was a man with a broken heart, but he did begin 
dimly to perceive that after all life had not entirely 
ended for him on Robert Keene’s piazza, that there 
were still minor satisfactions and pleasures to be 
obtained if one cared to stoop to them. 

Meanwhile, at home, in the red brick house, in 
the comfort of a dressing-gown and corsetless state, 
Sophia Danvers all but forgot her cherished neu¬ 
ralgia as she wrote her sister in a distant state a 
long letter, retailing at some length how ardently 
she hoped that James’ unreasonable infatuation for 
that flighty Joyce girl was nearing the end of its 
course, and making no secret of her belief that there 




PETER GOES TO CHURCH 115 


was also hope that he might be caught on the rebound 
and come to appreciate what a thoroughly sweet girl 
dear Angela was and what a suitable wife she would 
make him. 

“I am not mercenary,” she wrote. “It isn’t that 
Daphne hasn’t a penny and that Angela is an only 
daughter of old Mr. Gaylord who is so well fixed. 
James will have plenty himself. He won’t need to 
think about the money part of it in choosing a wife. 
But it is very important that he should marry the 
right kind of a girl, with no new fangled notions 
about woman’s rights and such rubbish. As if a 
woman needed any rights if she had a good husband. 
Daphne is quiet but I always have the feeling that 
she is thinking things inside that I wouldn’t under¬ 
stand or like if I did understand, and I am afraid 
she wouldn’t be any different even after she married 
James. Once a girl has ideas of her own, there is 
no telling where she will end. And anyway, Daphne 
is headstrong like her mother and who knows what 
bad blood she inherited from that papist father of 
hers? I fear she will come to no new good end 
though I know Lucinda Keene has done her best 
to bring her up like a Christian and a gentlewoman. 

“Just lately she has been running about with a 
queer, half-baked author whom she met dear knows 
how. Lucinda dodges the subject when anybody 
asks her. Most folks think she was never intro¬ 
duced to him at all, just picked him up somehow. 
Mira Wiggins says they call each other by their 
first names and they haven’t known each other a 
week yet. He is even living at the parsonage. 
I can’t think what Robert Keene is about to encour¬ 
age such a scandalous performance. The man is 
pretending to be helping with the haying but he 
isn’t at all a laboring person and they say he is 



116 PETEK’S BEST SELLER 


rolling in money so you can guess how much there 
is to that. It looks bad I think and there are others 
who agree with me. I don’t say there is anything 
really wrong—but it goes to show what I’ve told 
James over and over—that Daphne is flighty and 
no Danvers ever married a flighty woman yet. He 
is seeing it now for himself I’m glad to say, and 
I’ve no doubt this unseemly flirtation of Daphne’s 
has made him cool off. James is not the man to 
put up with that kind of doings from any girl.” 

Sophia Danvers considered herself an exemplary 
Christian and had really no idea she was showing 
herself less than her professions when she damned 
with innuendo the name of a girl who had never 
done her any harm except to be too pretty and too 
charming to the other’s only son. The grudge 
Sophia Danvers bore Daphne was rooted deep in the 
past. Daphne was the daughter of the woman she 
had hated with the mordant hate of a narrow soul, 
the woman whose picture was in her husband’s hands 
when he died, the woman whose name was the last 
word on his lips, the woman he had loved but never 
possessed. 

Sophia had never borne any resentment against 
James Danvers. He had been a kind and faithful 
husband always, though never a passionate lover, 
and she had known from the moment that he asked 
her to marry him, because he wished a home and 
children to carry on the Danvers name, that another 
woman had his deepest affection in her keeping. 
James had given her all he had promised and more, 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 117 


all he had to give, indeed, to the end. She blamed 
him for nothing. 

But Ruth Keene she had hated with unrelenting 
rancor all along, living and dead. And when her 
husband lay dead with Ruth’s picture in his cold, 
white hand, Sophia had snatched it away and hurled 
it fiercely into the leaping flame upon the hearth. 
She had watched with a kind of demonic joy while 
it blazed and scorched and blackened and finally 
vanished into nothingness. But after all it had been 
a vain holocaust. The instant of blind revenge had 
brought with it its own retribution. Though Ruth 
Keene’s picture was destroyed, the memory of it 
was not. Sometimes it seemed to Sophia that if she 
had not burned the picture she might have forgotten, 
and the old cankering wound might have healed. 
As it was, Ruth’s face rose up forever to mock her. 

Perhaps it was the memory of the picture more 
than anything else which had made her fight so 
tensely Daphne’s possible marriage to her son. 
Must she be forever mocked then? Must she see 
Ruth Keene’s face repeated in her daughter’s daily at 
her own hearth and board? Had not the Lord 
punished her enough without that? 

But tonight, although her son had told her nothing 
in words, she had a feeling that release was at hand 
from her too long cherished hate. If only she 
could find peace at last! If only James would give 
Daphne up and marry little Angela it seemed to 
her that there was no sacrifice she would not be 



118 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


willing to lay upon the altar of the Lord, no expiation 
she would not gladly make, even ceasing to hate 
Ruth's memory, even Ruth’s daughter’s lovely young 
self. 

It never occurred to Sophia that she might be 
calling down upon innocent Angela the very curse 
that had dogged her own steps, the curse of knowl¬ 
edge that her husband’s deepest love was another’s 
and not his wife’s. Perhaps she was right in not 
taking this possibility into consideration. For 
James Danvers, Junior, was far from being the man 
his father was and was scarcely capable of the latter’s 
fine tenacity of passion. Moreover Jimmy was only 
three and twenty and his father had been nearly 
forty when he had wooed and all but won lovely 
Ruth Keene and given her up freely to the man 
she really cared for. Life is more adaptable and 
love a more repeatable experience at twenty-three 
than at forty. Also, mistaken as she was in some 
of her judgments, Sophia was entirely right in the 
major one. Angela Gaylord was undoubtedly a far 
more suitable wife for her son than Daphne Joyce 
could ever have been. As Peter had said, there 
was a considerable possibility that married to 
Daphne, Jimmy would have led a devil of a life 
though Daphne would not have meant it to be so. 

So after all, things were taking a turn for the 
best, just as years ago they had done, when Ruth 
Keene, dutifully engaged to please her parents to a 
man twice her age, had suddenly and without warn- 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 119 


ing been swept from her moorings by the tempestu¬ 
ous wooing of the fiery young Irishman with a voice 
of molten silver. James Danvers was a good man 
and a rarely generous one but he was not the one 
for Ruth Keene. His blood ran with too even and 
tempered a flow. His ways were too sobered by 
the bearing of many burdens and the graying years 

to meet the need of her warm, budding youth. She 

\ 

had not even dimly guessed what love was when she 
pledged herself to him. But she knew what it was 
past any doubt when David Joyce’s passionate kisses 
fell on her cheeks, her hair, her lips. She came wide 
awake then, full woman, and knew that she could 
never marry James Danvers. It was the other— 
the young, the eager, the quick—that was her mate. 

She had gone straight to James with her lover’s 
unpremeditated kisses fresh upon her and told him' 
what had happened and how it was. He had set 
her free without a murmur or a reproach. He knew, 
as she did, that she had found her Great Adventure 
and that he had no right to hold her back. She 
had gone to David with his blessing, if not with 
her father’s. No wonder that Daphne, child of this 
mad, sweet, sudden, perfect mating coveted no less 
than the Great Adventure for herself and dreaded 
the encroaching shadow of the red brick house. 

While the rest of the family had gone to church, 
Peter Loomis was left alone on the Reverend Rob¬ 
ert’s piazza. Church going was not one of Peter’s 
habits. Such religion as he had was of an open 



120 PETER S BEST SELLER 

air variety, best satisfied in the spacious corridors of 
great forests, in the majesty of a night of a million 
stars or the brooding hush of desert vastness. 

He had inquired into creeds and philosophies as 
he had inquired into most things in the course of his 
restless, curious adventures but he had found none 
ready made to suit his needs just as he had found 
a college education inadequate for his catholic pur¬ 
poses. Such creed as he had was a very simple one 
—to be happy himself; to do nothing either con¬ 
sciously or unconsciously to mar the happiness of 
others; to stand ready to help others over any rough 
places in the journey whether those in need of help 
were saint or sinner or something between; to keep 
his soul and body free from all entanglements such 
as excess of worldly goods and cankering regrets; 
to keep faith with himself as to certain fundamental 
codes of honor and kindness and decency which he 
had long since evolved as a working basis of life. 
Truly, it was not much of a creed. Danversville, 
which was rather up on creeds, would scarcely have 
recognized it or admitted it as a creed at all, par¬ 
ticularly as it nowhere included an orthodox, all- 
powerful and infinite deity throned afar off and 
sitting in judgment upon erring humanity. 

Peter’s God, as he had been explaining to Mr. 
Keene, only that afternoon, was not a perfection 
but a power struggling toward perfection, never 
discouraged though ofttimes thwarted and baffled 
by man’s frailty and blundering incomprehension, 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 121 


never vanquished though sometimes temporarily 
defeated, ultimately to be wholly victorious, not of 
His own omnipotence but because man at last should 
catch the great vision and likewise will to achieve 
perfection. Billions of years it might take, yea, bil¬ 
lions of billions perhaps. Man was blind and dull, 
prone to vain detours and selfish, brutal retrogres¬ 
sions. But in the end, the thing God dreamed should 
come to pass. Wars and hates and greeds and sins 
and poverty and disease, and pettiness of thought 
and deed, all deformities of body and spirit would be 
outgrown, “cast as rubbish to the void.” 

When man had learned to live with man, with all 
created things, in brotherly love, then the law would 
be fulfilled and the Kingdom of Heaven be no 
longer a great prophecy and a far off divine hope 
but a present, enduring reality. Until these things 
became, God could not rest nor be satisfied with 
His handiwork. He must dream on and wait for 
man to see the light. For a God with a patience 
and a purpose like this, Peter had the greatest 
respect and reverence and was willing, in his own 
humble way to help His work along. 

All this however had nothing whatever to do 
with church going in Peter’s mind. Therefore when 
others prayed in tabernacles, some in deep sincerity 
and others in indifference and hypocrisy, he sat 
at home and meditated upon many things. 

Nevertheless something stirred within him which 
presently made him rise and throw away his cigarette 



122 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


and proceed churchward. He remembered having 
heard that Daphne was to sing a solo tonight. A 
sudden impulse took him there to hear her. After 
all she was David Joyce’s daugther and David 
Joyce’s daughter ought to have a voice that was 
worth going a quarter of a mile to hear. 

So it chanced that just as the Reverend Robert 
was completing a rather extended bulletin of infor¬ 
mation to the Lord, Peter Loomis strolled down th$ 
aisle and slipped into an empty seat, well toward the 
front. 

Angela nudged Jimmy Danvers. 

“Jimmy,” she whispered. “Isn’t that the Loomis 
man—the one they say Daphne is flirting with so 
outrageously?” 

Jimmy nodded sulkily. What was Peter Loomis 
doing at church? And if he had to come, why didn’t 
he come at the beginning of service as other people 
did and not walk in when meeting was half over? 
Jealously, he sought Daphne Joyce in her choir loft. 
He saw her lift her head, saw her eyes meet Peter’s 
and then drop. 

The organ struck a prefatory note and Daphne 
rose from her seat. For a moment she stood there 
alone, her face uplifted, a grave, far-away look upon 
it as if she were seeing some vision of celestial 
things. 

Peter caught his breath sharply. A panic seized 
him all at once. Did he really want to hear her 
sing? What if her singing did not match the rest 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 123 


of her? Was it not better to flee before a single 
quiver of disillusionment came? He wished he 
had taken a rear seat so that he could have effected 
an exit unnoticed. But even as he thought this it 
was too late. Daphne was already singing. 

“ ‘Awake! Awake! Put on thy strength, O, 
Zion!’ ” The girl’s voice, full-throated, clear, true, 
filled the silent church and uplifted its listeners to 
sacred places. 

“ ‘Put on thy robe of beauty, O Jerusalem, thou 
holy city!’” 

Peter scarcely breathed. He adored music. It 
thrilled him, excited him, intoxicated him as scarcely 
anything else in the world had power to do. And 
to think she could sing like that—that she had this 
gift too! It was almost too much—too unbelievable. 
Daphne ! Daphne! It was almost as if he had cried 
the name aloud and she had heard him, for at that 
instant her eyes met his and they exchanged a mes¬ 
sage—though what its burden was Peter scarcely 
knew, in the intensity and bewilderment of his 
emotions. 

“ 'How beautiful upon the mountains 
The feet of them that preach, 

That bring good words of peace,’ ” 

sang Daphne, her exquisite voice, lifting up, up, as 
a skylark wings its way to the infinite ether, as a 
cathedral spires to Heaven. 

“ ‘The Lord hath comforted his people, 

Hath comforted, hath comforted. 



124 PETER S REST SELLER 


He hath redeemed Jerusalem! 

He hath redeemed Jerusalem!’ ” 

The voice ceased. The organ quivered off to 
silence. Daphne sat down and bowed her head. For 
the space of a breath there was no sound in the 
church, not a rustle, nor whisper. For the moment 
Jerusalem was, indeed, redeemed. The little petty 
hates and spites and disillusionments were as if 
they had never been and could never be again. 

And then things went back to where they were 
before. To experience the Kingdom of Heaven is 
given but briefly to mortals upon earth and we lay 
aside, alas, too easily, the robe of beauty and grace. 

But for Peter things did not go back to where 
they were before. Something had happened to him 
and he knew it. He had to get out into the night 
to think it over—to try to find out what it was that 
had happened. 

The Reverend Robert rose to make some an¬ 
nouncements and Peter marched down the aisle, 
alone as he had come, followed curiously by many 
eyes. Women exchanged significant glances, peered 
up at Daphne, sitting quietly in the choir loft and 
cast sidelong looks at Jimmy Danvers, sullen and 
frowning in the family pew with Angela very close 
to him. 

The shrill pealing of the final hymn reached 
Peter’s ears vaguely as he left the church. 

“Till we me-e-et, till we me-e-et! 

Till we meet at Je-e-sus’ feet!” 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 125 


But the sound made no impression. He heard only 
Daphne’s voice. 

By the time Daphne, duly flanked by her rightful 
guardians, returned to the parsonage, Peter was 
invisible. The elders went promptly upstairs to 
bed and there seemed nothing else for Daphne to 
do but to follow their example though sleep was 
never farther from her eyes and mind. In her own 
room she did not turn on the light but instead walked 
over to the window and throwing wide the shutters, 
dropped on the window seat, looking out into the 
starlit night. 

And then, involuntarily, she drew back from the 
window for beneath it stood Peter Loomis looking 
up at her. 

“Daphne! Daphne Joyce!” he called softly. 
“Come on down. It is much too early for slumber.” 

“It isn’t so early. Don’t forget breakfast is at six 
thirty and you are a laboring man.” 

“I never worry about the morrow when I like 
tonight. Besides I have something very particular 
to say to you.” 

“Couldn’t you say it from there?” 

“No. Come on down for five minutes,” he 
wheedled. “Five minutes isn’t much to give me 
out of the whole lifetime you have got to sleep in.” 

Daphne still perversely shook her head. 

“Then you will never know how I liked your 
singing,” he threatened. 

“It is possible I might survive even so, but as it 



126 PETER S BEST SELLER 


happens I don’t have to. You told me right out 
in meeting.” 

Peter smiled at that. 

“So you do know you bowled me completely over. 
I might have known it. I mean I might have known 
you would know, you witch!” 

“How could I help knowing? Your countenance 
was an open book, or rather it was a whole serial 
story. First you were afraid, horribly afraid, so 
petrified, that I couldn’t sing that you couldn’t even 
run away. And then after I began you looked like 
a cherub being fed heavenly manna or whatever it is 
they feed infants with in Paradise. Peter! Peter! 
You shouldn’t show your emotions so visibly,” teased 
Daphne. “I know just exactly how much you liked 
my singing though nine-tenths of the liking was no 
doubt sheer relief that I didn’t flat or screech 
or do any of the horrible things you were afraid 
I might do.” 

“Ah, but I don’t believe you do know how much 
I liked it. Anyway you’d like to hear me tell you 
in person. You know you would. Come on down.” 

Daphne smiled at that and relented. Perhaps she 
had meant all along to relent. Who knows ? 

“Very well. If I must come down to hear the 
verdict I’ll descend for three minutes—one hundred 
and eighty golden seconds, count to begin when I 
arrive.” 

When she came out of the front door, Peter was 
waiting at the foot of the steps for her. He held 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 127 


out his hand and for once she let him keep it until 
he had led the way to the rustic seat under the lilac 
bushes, a seat hitherto consecrated to Jimmy Dan¬ 
vers. As they sat down a slim little moon peered 
down at them through an elm tree just as it had 
peered at many another man and maid since time 
began. As the Hindu proverb says so the moon 
must have thought, “Nothing has changed since the 
time of the gods—the flowing of water, the way 
of love.” 

Yet if the moon were romantically inclined as a 
June moon should be, it must have been distinctly 
disappointed at Peter’s first speech and at the fact 
that he released the girl’s hand and stared straight 
ahead of him at the tiger lilies instead of into her 
pansy eyes as he spoke. 

“After all I’m not going to tell you what I think 
of your voice,” he said. “Life is too short and the 
dictionary hasn’t the right words. It is a gift of the 
gods you have and you know it. But like all gifts of 
the gods it must be cherished and cultivated. Your 
technique is faulty in spots. There is a tremolo you 
oughn’t to have and a few other minor faults which 
could easily be corrected.” 

Daphne bit her lip. She was not at all vain either 
of her singing or in general, but she had not joined 
Peter Loomis under the crescent moon to hear that 
her technique was faulty. 

She did not speak and perhaps Peter sensed her 
involuntary reaction of disappointment for he turned 



128 PETER S BEST SELLER 


back to her then with a smile that was quizzical as 
well as kindly. 

“You didn’t expect me to say that, did you?” he 
challenged. 

“I never expect where you are concerned, Peter. 
At least I shouldn’t. It is always the unexpected 
that is to be expected.” There was a tiny hint of 
tartness in Daphne’s voice as she made the answer. 
Then she looked up and meeting Peter’s friendly 
eyes smiled back. “It is true, Peter. I did come 
down here in the horrid vanity of my heart to hear 
you praise my voice and instead you are telling me 
—the truth. You are quite right. My technique is 
faulty. I have never had a lesson in my life. I 
have always had to concentrate my studying on the 
piano part because that is what I do for a living— 
more or less. My voice has had to take care of 
itself.” 

“That is the best thing that could have happened 
to it. The wrong teacher would have been fatal. 
More voices are spoiled that way than by total 
lack of training and you are a natural born musician 
anyway, as well as having a divine voice. But you 
mustn’t wait any longer. You’ve got to study at 
once. 

“But I can’t, Peter. To study the way I want to 
—the only way I would be satisfied to do—takes a 
great deal of money. It is utterly out of the ques¬ 
tion. Uncle Robert and Aunt Lucinda have sacrificed 
enough for me already. I mean never to cost them 



PETER GOES TO CHURCH 129 


anything more if I can help it. So that is the 
end of it.” 

“Not a bit of it. It is only the beginning. Listen 
to me, Daphne Joyce. I have a great deal of money, 
more than I can find ways of spending and I hate 
to let it accumulate. It clutters everything up so. 
I have tried various more or less creditable ways 
of disposing of it but up to now I have never under¬ 
taken to finance a prima donna. I think I would 
enjoy it as a new experience. Would you let me?” 

“Peter! You mean—you’d—lend me—money?” 

“Yes. Is there anything very startling in that? 
You aren’t going to commence to be Danversvillian 
at this late date, are you?” 

“I don’t know whether it is Danversvillian or not, 
Peter, but I do know I couldn’t do it even if Uncle 
Robert would be willing, which I am sure he 
wouldn’t.” 

“Don’t you ever dream of being a great singer 
as your father was—having the world at your 
feet?” probed Peter. 

Daphne shivered. 

“Don’t I? Oh, Peter, I’d be ashamed to tell you 
how often I’ve dreamed it. But it is just a dream. 
It can’t ever be anything else.” 

“It could,” said Peter, “if you would listen to 
me. It is an absurd, sentimental convention that a 
girl may not borrow money from a man. What is 
the difference? If some nice, old maid millionaire 





130 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


asked you to go to Paris and study five years at her 
expense, wouldn’t you jump to the suggestion?” 

“Maybe,” said Daphne. “Maybe not. Anyway 
there is nary a millionairess in sight so there is no 
need of conjecture. Thank you, Peter. It is nice 
of you to think of it but it can’t be done. Fancy 
what Danversville would say!” 

“Damn Danversville!” observed Peter with some 
feeling. 

Daphne smiled. 

“I often feel like doing that very thing,” she said. 
“But since I live in it I can’t—not really. I have 
got to take a little care of what people say, if only 
for Uncle Robert’s sake.” 

“Well, you could marry me and then there 
wouldn’t be any excuse for Danversville’s damna¬ 
tion,” drawled Peter. 

“No, it would be only you and I who would be 
damning each other,” said Daphne shortly. “Peter, 
I wish you would stop proposing to me for such 
absurd reasons. This is the third time you’ve done 
it today and I don’t like it. Besides, my three min¬ 
utes—I mean your three minutes—were up long ago. 
I must go in.” She got to her feet and Peter rose 
too. He put out his hand and detained her a 
moment. 

“Daphne,” he said, “sometimes I think-” 

But Daphne shook her head at him. 

“No, you don’t, Peter—not really. At least you 
won’t—by tomorrow. Good night.” 




PETER GOES TO CHURCH 131 

And drawing her hand away from him, suddenly 
startled by the look in his eyes which were just then 
unprecedentedly wide awake, Daphne fled across the 
grass, even as the mythical Daphne fled her pursuing 
god. 

But Peter did not pursue. He simply stood very 
still staring after the lithe, flying, young figure. It 
was not until the light in Daphne’s room had 
flashed on and out again that he entered the house 
and mounted the stairs to his own room. Arrived 
there he immediately pulled out the little black book 
and began to write furiously as he had the other 
night. By the time he had finished, the young moon 
had gone to bed and even the fireflies which had 
fluttered like the ghosts of dreams unfulfilled, too 
splendid to weave themselves into the dun realities 
of life, flitted no longer about the garden. 



CHAPTER VII 


GIDDY FOLLOWS UP HIS PRESCRIPTION 

Gideon Blakesley, weary and frazzled from a 
strenuous day in the office, stepped into his cool 
library and breathed a sigh of deep content as he 
beheld his wife, Sue, her beautiful friend, Marian 
Somers, and a tea wagon, adorned with sandwiches, 
delectable looking little cakes and a large glass 
pitcher filled with a rosy, iced liquid. It must be 
admitted that, as he seated himself in his favorite 
arm chair by the window overlooking the Charles, 
his gaze lingered rather longer and more appreci¬ 
atively upon the tea wagon than upon his wife and 
her guest. 

Having consumed a generous quantity of the 
pleasing viands and drained three glasses of the 
agreeable rosy liquid, he leaned back in his chair 
and, lighting a cigar, announced that he had heard 
from Peter. 

Sue set down her own glass, eager interest in her 

eyes. Peter was one of her very special friends 

though she did not always, or even often, approve 

of him and his doings. She had been more than a 

little worried about him last spring when he had 

seemed so listless and weary of body and soul, so 

132 


GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


133 


unlike his usual buoyant, insouciant self. She hoped 
that her husband had good news of him now. 
Marian Somers did not change her position nor turn 
her gaze away from the blue-gray river far below. 
Only the sudden stiffening of the slender, aristo¬ 
cratic, beautifully manicured, white hand upon the 
pale green cushion betrayed that she, too, was inter¬ 
ested in Gideon’s news of Peter Loomis. 

“Is Peter all right ? And is he beginning to write 
again?’’ demanded Sue. 

Her husband laid down his cigar and commenced 
to fumble in his pocket. With aggravating delib¬ 
erateness, he finally produced a sheet of paper, a 
queer looking, rather informal sheet at that, with a 
perforated edge as if it had been torn from a note 
book. 

“I judge he is all right,’’ he said. “And he is 
beginning to write. But it isn’t a novel he is up to 
but poetry. Would you believe it of old Peter? 
Darn good poetry, too, if I am any judge and who 
should be, if I’m not?” 

“Give it here, this minute,’’ ordered Sue, reaching 
out her hand for the paper and her eyes ran down the 
closely written page. She was off. Marian and 
Giddy were left to amuse each other as best they 
might. 

Marian was lovely enough to make any man 
grateful for the privilege of looking at her but 
Giddy was too accustomed to her beauty to get any 
thrills out of it. As a matter of fact he knew she 



134 PETER S BEST SELLER 


was good to look upon, just as statues in the museum 
were. But for every day consumption he vastly 
preferred his wife’s more irregular profile and dis¬ 
position, her greater vivacity and humanness, her 
quick eager motions, her ready laughter and wit, 
her sharp tongue, her sensitive sympathy. Marian 
was a shade too perfect and patrician for Giddy’s 
taste. 

He turned to her now, though, intent on dis¬ 
cussing Peter. 

“Just like him,” he remarked. “Always up and 
does the unexpected. Plere I have been about crazy 
trying to get him to write another book as good as 
the early ones and instead he turns out a smashing 
bit of poetry in an absolutely new style, as intense 
as the devil, with a something in it—a some¬ 
thing-” He broke off and began again. “I don’t 

know what it is, though I’ve seen it often enough 
and seen the pitiful lack of it a million times. It is 
something you can’t analyse or name. All you can 
do is feel it and salute it if you are lucky enough 
to have it come your way. I suppose we may as 
well call it genius for want of a better name. Funny 
part of it is though,” he rambled on, thinking out 
loud, “Peter’s fiction isn’t genius, not by a long shot. 
It is just amazingly facile, perfect, natural crafts¬ 
manship. But this-” Giddy eyed the leaf of 

Peter’s note book almost suspiciously, “I swear it’s 
a great poem, what there is of it. It’s only a few 
lines. I am hanged if I wouldn’t match it up with 





GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


135 


some of Shelley’s or Swinburne’s or even some of 
Bobby Burns’ if I were reading them and this 
fresh at the same time. A love poem at that! Old 
Peter! Can vou beat it?” 

m/ 

Marian’s daintily arched eyebrows went up a little. 

“A love poem!” she murmured. “That is a sur¬ 
prise. Let me see it, Sue. I am all curiosity.” 

“Wait,” commanded Sue. “I’ve got to read it 
over again.” Her eyes were shining, her cheeks 
flushed. She had run her hand through her hair, 
rumpling it shockingly, a trick which she had when 
she was greatly interested in anything. 

Giddy puffed away happily on his cigar. It was 
one of the things he was most thankful for in Sue 
that her taste was so unerring when it came to 
judging literature. He was an excellent critic him¬ 
self. He had to be. Upon his ability to appreciate 
intrinsic worth of a thing combined with skillful 
judgment in predicting what the public would like, 
his modest success as a publisher had been built up. 
But Sue was different. She knew whether a thing 
was good or not purely on its own merits. She 
didn’t care whether the public liked it or not. She 
only knew what she liked, and what she liked was 
the wine of the true vine every time. Giddy had 
learned that years ago to his pride and delight. 

Therefore if Sue liked Peter’s poem, and her 
shining face testified that she did, it was a good 
poem—just as good as Giddy had opined, maybe 
better. 



136 PETEK’S BEST SELLER 


“You like it?” he asked now as Sue finally relin¬ 
quished the poem to Marian. Not that he needed 
to ask. He knew. But he wanted to hear Sue say 
it herself out loud. 

“Like it! It is a gem and you know it. Did 
Peter say who the girl was?” 

“The girl!” Gideon stared a little blankly at his 
wife. “What girl?” Then as comprehension 
dawned, “My dear Sue, surely you haven’t moved 
in literary circles all these years and don’t know that 
a poet doesn’t need to have a flesh and blood instiga¬ 
tion to inspiration. Poets’ loves are creatures of 
fire and dew and moonshine. They do not live and 
move and have their being in terrestrial spheres. 
Imagination, my dear! The lady that never was on 
sea or land—the dream girl. When you are in love 
with a real girl you don’t write poems. You are too 
busy. Possibly the very, very young write poems 
from first causes but this poem of Peter’s isn’t a 
young poem. It is exceedingly grown up—not to 
say sophisticated. I grant you it may be the com¬ 
posite of half a dozen love affairs of his experience 
but it isn’t the product of one in progress, I’ll bet 
my hat. Peter doesn’t take love as seriously as that, 
eh, Marian?” 

Giddy’s appeal was quite innocent, without 
arriere pensee. But Sue looked up at him quickly 
as if she would have liked to nip it in the bud. She 
knew what her husband perhaps did not know, that 
it was hardly tactful to talk to Marian about Peter’s 



GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


137 


composition and eminently non-serious love affairs. 

“Peter takes nothing very seriously, does he?” 
murmured Marian placidly. “It is a very charming 
poem, isn’t it? The bit about the fireflies being the 
ghosts of dreams is very original and striking, quite 
beautifully phrased.” 

“It is a peach of a poem every line of it,” insisted 
Giddy. “By the way, prepare to make your bows to 
me. Peter is trying my prescription. That is what 
did it.” 

“Your prescription! Work! Not Peter!” gasped 
Sue, incredulous. 

“Even Peter. You needn’t look so unbelieving. 
It is gospel truth. I am convinced-” 

“Nobody ever doubted that you were convinced, 
dear Giddy. It is Peter’s being convinced that is 
hard to swallow. Read us his letter, won’t you? 
Or is it strictly confidential?” 

“About as confidential as an oyster cocktail, I 
should say. Here it is.” Once more Mr. Blakesley 
dived into his pocket and this time produced a letter 
in Peter’s big, sprawling handwriting. 

“ T have become a laboring man as per your 
esteemed prescription. I tried Sam’s first but found 
vegetability a distinct bore after a few days’ trial 
and was obliged to eliminate it from my career. 1 
am now making hay and so far the performance has 
not bored me. Should it begin to do so, I should 
cease at once. I am not going to write any more 
books. Writing books also bores me, especially writ¬ 
ing such infernally bad ones as I have been perpe- 




138 PETER S BEST SELLER 


trating of late. I am sending you a poem I wrote 
last night. If you like it you can have it for the 
International. If you don’t like it no doubt there 
will be room for it in your waste basket as it is a 
very small poem. 

“ ‘I am staying on indefinitely in Danversville. 

“ ‘I am well and hope you and Sue are the same. 

“ ‘Love. 

“ ‘Peter/ 

“What do you make of that?’’ Thus Gideon 
challenged the opinion of his audience. 

“Evidently Peter didn’t find Danversville as dead 
as it was painted. I wonder what he is up to? Of 
course, the haymaking is just a blind.” 

“Well, I like that,” put in Giddy aggrieved. 
“Why should it be a blind? Why shouldn’t he be 
following my advice?” 

“Because, my dear boy, nobody ever follows 
advice as such and certainly not Peter. If he really 
is making hay and if it hasn’t bored him so far, it 
is because there is a bonus somewhere thrown in, and 
ten to one it is a pretty one.” 

“What nonsense, Sue!” Marian joined in, with 
the faintest suggestion of acerbity in her beautifully 
modulated voice. “You are the most obstinate per¬ 
son when you get an idea in your head. As Giddy 
says, just because Peter has written a love poem 
doesn’t prove he is in love with anybody.” 

“I wasn’t thinking about the poem. I was think¬ 
ing about haymaking. I lived in the country once 
myself and I know what you two city bred mortals 



GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


139 


don’t, namely, that making hay is hard, plain, un¬ 
adorned work. Now do either of you picture Peter 
exerting himself, day after day in the broiling hot 
sun, doing a strenuous and not too interesting job 
like that, without some compensating circumstances ? 
Well, I don’t, if you do. I’ll have to be shown very 
convincingly that there isn’t a pretty girl connected 
with the affair. I have known Peter Loomis quite 
a number of years.” 

“Maybe you are right,” admitted her husband 
dubiously. “I’d like to see old Peter really working 
though. Must be some sight.” 

“Why not give yourself the pleasure?” inquired 
Marian. “Danversville isn’t so far from here. We 
could make it easily in half a day. Let us motor up 
and catch Peter in the act. What do you say?” 

“Great!” agreed Gideon heartily. “Game, Sue?” 

Sue hesitated for just the fraction of a second. 
She had a shrewd suspicion that one of the reasons 
why Peter had left town was because he was willing 
not to see Marian Somers for a time. Still it 
was a temptation to go in person to see what Peter 
was up to and if there really was a girl behind his 
love lyric. If there was, Sue wanted to see the 
girl. She didn’t want Peter to make any mistake. 
Yes, on the whole, it was better to go. 

“Why, yes,” she said aloud. “It is barely possible 
however that Peter won’t be overjoyed to see us.” 

“Nonsense! Of course Peter will be glad to see 
us,” declared her husband. “Maybe he will be tired 



140 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


of his haying by the time we get there and will be 
ready to come back to town with us. Stranger things 
have happened. Now then when shall we start? 
I can’t be gone away more than one night but you 
girls can stay as long as you like and take notes on 
Peter, the laboring man. I suppose there is a hotel.” 

“Peter is staying at a place called the Tower Hill 
Inn,” volunteered Marian. 

“Was,” corrected Gideon, consulting Peter’s 
epistle. “He now resides at Box 64, Danversville, 
N. H. r in the care of the Reverend Robert Keene. 
Good Lord! The Reverend! I didn’t notice that 
before. How did old Peter ever manage to fall into 
that kind of company, I wonder. Do you suppose 
he wears overalls and sleeps in the Reverend’s shed 
chamber ?” 

“Gideon! I wish you wouldn’t paint such horrid 
pictures,” objected Marian. “It is absurd enough 
to fancy Peter’s working at all without imagining 
such ridiculous details.” 

“Very well. I withdraw the suggestion. No 
doubt he is wearing palm beach and occupying the 
Reverend Robert’s bridal suite,” grinned Gideon. 
“Cheer up, all. We shall soon know the worst. 
I repeat, when do we start?” 

Then followed a discussion of dates and arrange¬ 
ments at the close of which Miss Somers took her 
departure. 

“Did it ever occur to you that Marian likes old 




GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


141 


Peter rather well?” inquired Giddy, when the latter 
had gone. 

“Why, of course, she likes him,” said Sue. 
“Everybody likes Peter. I adore him myself.” 

She busied herself clearing up the tea table. Sue 
had that rather rare attribute among women, a sense 
of sex solidarity. Even to her husband she did not 
care to admit that her friend not only liked Peter 
but had, not so long ago, been rather by way of 
being in love with him, in her reserved way. 

“Can’t make me jealous, old girl,” chuckled Giddy. 
“You adore Peter the way you adore babies.” 

“Well, Peter is a good deal of a baby,” admitted 
Sue. “Some ways he is fearfully and wonderfully 
helpless, especially when he is exposed to beauty— 
especially, again, feminine beauty. But he is wary, 
too. Wary and wise. Think of it, Gideon. 
Wouldn’t you like to be as free as he is? Plenty of 
money, no business cares, no church or club to 
support, no children to worry over, no—well—no 
me?” Sue came and perched on the window seat 
beside Giddy’s arm chair, clasping her hands around 
her knees and suddenly looking very earnest and a 
little wistful. “Peter can start for the world’s end 
any minute with no delay and nothing to leave or 
bother about. Don’t you envy him ? Doesn’t a man 
ever get horribly tired of being forever—bound?” 

“Sometimes,” acknowledged her husband honestly. 

“I was afraid so,” sighed Sue. “Why don’t you 
get up and go sometimes? You could. There isn’t 



142 PETER S BEST SELLER 


an obligation you couldn’t leave if you had to or 
wanted to—even me.” 

Gideon reached for his wife’s hand in the twilight. 

“Do you think I would want to when it came to 
the point?” he asked. “I might manage to leave the 
rest on a pinch, the business, the kids, everything— 
everything but you. When it was time for picking 
up I’d pick you up first of all and carry you off with 
me to world’s end. There is nothing surer than that 
under the sun or stars. As for Peter I certainly 
don’t envy him. He is the loneliest person I know, 
way down in his heart. He has spent so much time 
running round after life that he never had a chance 
to find it. Ask Peter whether he thinks he or I is 
the luckier.” 

Sue slipped off the window seat and came and laid 
her soft cheek against her husband’s for an instant. 

“You are rather a dear, sometimes, Giddy,” she 
said, dropping into his lap. “And you are right. 
Peter is lonely. Maybe that was why, when he came 
back from Mexico last winter, he tried to make 
Marian fit into the niche of the not-impossible but 
highly improbable she.” 

“You think he did try it?” 

“I am sure of it. He was half sick, tired to death, 
fed up with travelling hither and yon. Just for a 
little while, he thought he wanted to settle down 
even as you and I. He lost himself in the dream 
just for a little I fancy, though. I know he never 
actually made love to her. I know he never said a 




GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


143 


word to her about marrying him. Maybe he knew 
himself too well to run any risks until he was sure. 
And then he got sick and when he came out of the 
hospital—well, you know how it was. He wasn’t 
interested in anything, not even a beautiful lady. 
Settling down was the farthest thing from his 
desires.” 

“So he just quietly canned Marian?” mused 
Gideon. 

“Giddy! Don’t say such horrid things,” pro¬ 
tested Sue. “It wasn’t a case of canning. There 
had never been anything tangible between them. 
Marian was—well, just his favorite picture for a 
while, that is all. Marian herself wasn’t really what 
he wanted. It would have been the most impossible 
kind of marriage for both of them. Anybody could 
see that, Peter and Marian saw it clearest of all. 
Peter is a pure democrat, loves beggars and princes 
impartially, but Marian is an aristocrat of the aristo¬ 
crats and always will be. She would always be 
benevolent to the poor, the perfect Ruskinesque lady 
—the loaf giver. But the poor would always be the 
poor to her, never by any chance kindred beings. 
Moreover Marian expects life to move in smooth, 
well-oiled, perfectly adjusted grooves and Peter 
likes life smashing off, without notice, on queer 
tangents. He would be quite capable of starting 
for the north pole the very evening Marian was 
giving a reception for Lord and Lady So-and-So. 
It never would have done.” 



144 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“No more it would,” agreed Gideon. “I am glad 
it didn’t come off. I fancy Peter isn’t likely to find 
the right girl. He gets his fun out of looking for 
her.” 

But the next morning when he found another 
poem from Peter mailed without comment of any 
kind, he began to wonder if Sue might not be right. 
It began to look as if there actually were a girl 
behind Peter’s unexpected aberration into poetry. 

The second poem was also unmistakably a love 
poem and also undeniably “great stuff.” He turned 
this poem of Peter’s over to his wife who pro¬ 
nounced it quite as good as the first if not better. 
What was Peter about anyway? Was he fooling 
them again as he had fooled them when he began 
his fiction, striking a lead in fifteen minutes where 
other better men had never even thought of pros¬ 
pecting? Was he making a lyrico-dramatic experi¬ 
ment just to prove he could do it as easily as he had 
turned out the books? Or was there something 
deeper, more vital involved? Frankly Gideon did 
not know. He had learned to be cautious about 
drawing conclusions from Peter's performances. 

“Peter is finding himself,” Sue sighed. “I am 
so glad. I knew there was a lot in him he wouldn’t 
let us see but I didn’t know there was that much.” 
To herself she added, “She must be a golden girl 
to make him let himself go like that not caring who 
knows he has got a soul.' 1 Sue was thankful that 
they had arranged to go to Danversville so soon. 




GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


145 


She wanted to see the girl who had done this to 
Peter. She must be worth seeing, Sue thought. 

In the meantime her husband was remembering 
his own admirable prescription and proceeded to 
plume himself on his remarkable acumen in hitting 
on the very thing Peter needed to restore him to 
the track. 

“There is nothing like getting back to nature and 
using one’s hands instead of one’s head for a 
change,’’ he summed up complacently. “See what 
it did for Peter.” 

But Sue waved away his self-congratulation. 

“Stuff and nonsense! You will find it wasn’t 
the haying that did for Peter. He never raked that 
poem up in the hay field in the living world.” 

“Why not?” argued her husband. “Bobby Burns 
ploughed up poems, didn’t he?” 

“Peter Loomis and Bobby Burns are two very 
different animals.” 

“I grant you Peter is more moral and less of a 
genius,” grinned Giddy. “Very well, my dear. 
Don’t give me any credit if you don’t want to. We 
shall see what we shall see.” 

Registering at the desk at the Tower Hill Inn a 
few days later, Gideon inquired of the clerk if they 
had a Mr. Loomis staying with them. Box 64 and 
the Reverend had sounded fishy to Giddy. The clerk 
had had a Mr. Loomis. Mr. Loomis had left on 
Friday last. No, he hadn’t exactly left town. If 
Mr. Loomis had not exactly left town where was he? 




146 PETER S BEST SELLER 


The clerk did not know for positive sure, but he 
had heard that Mr. Loomis was stopping at Parson 
Keene’s down in the village. His tone implied that 
the descent from the sacred precincts of the Tower 
Hill Inn to a mere village abode was a considerable 
one in other senses than a mere topographical one. 

“I see,” murmured Gideon moving off to follow 
his ladies to the elevator. 

But the clerk made an unmistakable sign to him 
to linger. He lingered letting the elevator depart 
with his wife and Miss Somers and the bell boy and 
the baggage. 

“I say,” accosted the clerk, dropping into the 
vernacular, “do you happen to know this Loomis?” 

Mr. Blakesley happened in the affirmative. 

“Well, between you and me, I believe he’s a bit 
nutty—little off in the upper story you know.” The 
speaker patted his own auburn thatched “upper 
story” to make clear his insinuation. “They say he 
makes thousands and thousands of dollars on his 
books and he’s makin’ hay for the Parson, for two 
dollars a day and keep. What do you know about 
that?” 

Mr. Blakesley did not know as much as he would 
like to know and consequently kept silent, confident 
that he might, by so doing, elicit more information, 
a confidence not misplaced. 

“Can’t make head nor tail to it myself,” continued 
the clerk. “But it’s true that he’s hayin’. I saw 
him myself driving the Parson’s sorrel colt. He 




GIDDY FOLLOWS UP 


147 


didn’t look a mite ashamed being caught either, just 
grinned and saluted as if I were a general. He’s 
a queer one. We liked him. He was awful liberal 
with his tips and never kicked about anything. But 
he’s queer for all that, queer as queer.” 

Mr. Blakesley ventured to imply not too harshly 
that Peter’s queerness was after all his own business. 
But the clerk was not to be silenced just yet. 

“Know the Parson?” he inquired. 

Mr. Blakesley knew no one in Danversville. 

“Then you don’t know his niece, either.” The 
clerk bent over the counter assuming a confidential 
attitude. “Between you and me, she’s some peach. 
Don’t know as I blame Mr. Loomis for moving 
down to the Parson’s. Maybe I’d move myself if I 
had a show in that quarter. I’m not much for these 
country dames, bein’ from the city myself, but 
believe me, she’s a bird. Perhaps the Loomis feller 
isn’t so darned nutty after all when you come to 
think of it. Yes, sir, ice water, right away, sir. 
Anything else, sir?” The last formula was hastily 
added as the proprietor of the Inn chanced to stroll 
by at the moment thereby cutting off the clerk’s 
volubilities. 

Gideon looked meditative as he rode up the ele¬ 
vator following the others. So Sue was right, as 
usual. There was a girl—some peach of a girl 
at that. 

He was still meditative when he entered the room 
where Sue was already engaged in powdering her 




148 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


nose as if the fate of nations depended upon the 
performance being done to an exact perfection. 

“I thought that boy must have been an old college 
classmate of yours,” she scoffed. “I never saw such 
sudden intimacy develop. Did you remember to 
ask where Peter’s Reverend lives?” She turned 
from the mirror as she asked the question and seeing 
her husband’s expression, opened her mouth to ask 
another question. 

But from his vantage point, behind the half opened 
door which separated him from Miss Somers in the 
adjoining room, Gideon signalled for silence. 

Sue swallowed her interrogation and crossed the 
room to where her husband stood with a few quick 
steps. 

“Peter?” she whispered anxiously. 

“A girl,” whispered Giddy back in her ear. 

“I told you so.” Sue’s lips formed the words 
as they do in the movies though her speech was 
inaudible. 

“You did,” groaned Giddy softly. “Let’s get the 
worst over and seek the Parson in his den. I hope 
he hasn’t married ’em yet—for the fee.” 



CHAPTER VIII 


IN WHICH PETER IS CAUGHT 

As a matter of fact, nothing was farther from 
Peter’s thoughts that afternoon than matrimony or 
even love. Down in the south meadow he was 
supremely content with his own occupation and 
environment and wanted nothing better than the 
present moment. 

Whatever the outcome of Gideon’s prescription so 
far as Peter’s writing went, there wasn’t any doubt 
that it had been exceedingly beneficial for his health 
to enjoy Aunt Lucinda’s incomparable cooking and 
the not too arduous task of haymaking for Uncle 
Robert. The weary slouch was gone from his 
shoulders. A ruddy coat of tan had replaced the 
gray pallor of his face. Returning to the ways and 
work of his boyhood, Peter himself had come back. 

For it had been by no means fabrication on his 

part when he had told Daphne that he had made 

hay in the early stages of his varied career. In 

those long ago haymaking days there had been no 

compensating circumstances, no masquerading as a 

hired man. It had been the real thing, out and out 

hard work, from sunrise to sunset, none too much 

or too appetizing food, a corn husk mattress under 

149 


150 PETER S BEST SELLER 


the sweltering heat of an attic roof at the end of the 
day. Hard days they had been but not unhappy ones, 
for they had held the bitter sweet tang of youth, the 
secret brooding of dreams, the sure conviction that 
these things were only a passing phase, that in a 
few years freedom would be his and the wide world 
an open gate for his feet. Even in his boyhood Peter 
had known that sooner or later he should go ajour- 
neying. The brand of Ulysses was upon him. He 
could not rest until he had seen far countries, sailed 
on all the seven seas, followed beauty to the ends of 
the earth. 

Peter came of “gentle folk” and though the ele¬ 
ments were mixed in him Peter was gentle too. His 
mother had been rarely gifted and fine natured, pos¬ 
sessed of an unquenchable passion for all things 
beautiful. When his head barely reached above the 
keys he remembered standing beside her at the piano 
while she played Chopin and Mozart and Beethoven 
and Liszt. There had been an opera too, once in 
a great while, in seats way up under the roof, music 
that made something swell in Peter’s throat it was 
so heavenly beautiful. Holding tight to his mother’s 
hand, he had threaded the mazes of the museum on 
the edge of the park and learned to know and love 
great pictures and noble statuary. Other people had 
these things in their houses in the great rich city. 
Peter and his mother had them in their hearts. 

By and by there came a day when Peter heard 
with delight and wonder and a thrill of excitement 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


151 


that kept him awake nights that they were going to 
move to the country. It was great news for the 
small boy who was already developing a zest for 
journeying, though a boat trip up the Hudson and 
an excursion or two to Jersey or out on Long Island 
were the sum of his travels up to then. It was not 
until long after that he came to understand that for 
his mother the thing was not such great news as 
it was for him. 

They were moving to the country, as a matter of 
fact, because Peter’s father, having failed at prac¬ 
tically everything else he had attempted, had decided 
to try farming as a last resort. Stephen Loomis 
was one of the persons who are constitutionally 
unable to get ahead in a worldly way. He was 
always slipping back, slowly at first, and later faster 
and farther, with the fatal momentum acquired from 
many past failures. 

Naturally the farm was the crowning failure of 
them all. For a man who had never done a day’s 
work out of doors and was far from vigorous in 
physique, and who knew as little of the precarious 
art of agriculture as a new born infant might know 
of quadratics, it was little short of a tragedy to try 
this unpromising profession. Added to his natural 
incapacity for the life the unlucky Stephen had rashly 
elected, were the facts that the farm itself was 
already worked out, the barn and house and out 
buildings in shocking disrepair, farming implements, 
machinery and stock entirely missing and not a cent 



152 PETER S BEST SELLER 


of extra capital forthcoming to supply even the 
smallest of the deficiencies. There followed two 
years of agonizing struggle and inevitable failure 
and then Stephen Loomis lay down and died. Heart 
failure, the doctor called it. It was literally that. 
The man’s heart had failed him. He had no more 
will to continue the unequal fight with fate. 

By this time Peter was a tall, awkward, taciturn, 
rather “difficult” lad of fourteen, completely trans¬ 
formed in the two years into a true country boy, 
versed in all the lore of wood and stream, fishing, 
hunting, skating, roaming the mountains, making 
friends with the creatures of the wild, finding in 
wind-swept pines and the rush of spring-swollen 
torrents the same “beauty born of murmuring 
sound” that had been wont to fill his heart and ears 
in the great opera house. Indeed he had come to 
perceive vaguely that there was a oneness about all 
the forms and manifestations of beauty. Whether 
it was the song of the hermit at twilight, or a single 
star against a pale rose dawn sky, or water lilies 
in a woodland pool, or the austere grandeur of the 
white winter woods, or whether it was the Moonlight 
Sonata or the Winged Victory or the Sistine Ma¬ 
donna or the Ode to the Nightingale—they were all 
somehow part of the same thing. His mother said 
the thing was God. Peter did not know about that. 
He wasn’t so sure about God. He was sure of 
beauty. Beauty was his god. 

His father’s death precipitated changes already 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


153 


imminent. They sold the farm, though it was too 
heavily mortgaged to yield much on the credit side, 
and moved into the village where Mrs. Loomis took 
the post of housekeeper to a recently bereaved 
“widow man” and also kept the village library for 
a pittance of a salary. 

Peter occupied a tiny room in the widower’s third 
story and went to school when school was open, 
which was none too much of the year in those days. 
In the long vacations, summer and winter, he hired 
out for farm work or helped the log men, laying by 
a little each season toward his Education, that word 
which his mother spelled always with a capital 
and kept always in her son’s ears and before his 
mind. 

Peter did not question the importance of the cap¬ 
italized word. His father and mother had both had 
Education. It was natural they should have desired 
it for him. In the meantime, he read voluminously 
and widely, books of every scope and kind. The 
widower’s father had been a minister and left a well 
stocked library in which Peter was free to browse 
at will and there was also the village library to which 
his mother had the key and to which the boy crept 
forth, night after night, on venturous journeys in 
the realms of gold. He was getting Education all 
the time from the greatest masters in the world 
though he scarcely knew it. 

In school he outstripped his teachers who were a 
little afraid of his uncanny store of heterogeneous 



154 PETER’S BEST SELLER 

knowledge. He had outread them and in many 
ways out-thought them too. There was little they 
could give him by way of “book learning” and they 
knew it. Consequently they snubbed him as much 
as they dared and were thankful when he decided to 
quit school entirely and take to logging. But his 
mother shed many tears over the decision and only 
consented because she knew it would mean enough 
money to start college in the fall. 

That winter in the woods was a new era to the 
boy. He had always loved the out-of-door world 
but never until now had he made himself one com¬ 
pletely with it, lived in it, day and night, entered into 
intimate companionship with its throbbing, mysteri¬ 
ous, all-wonderful life. 

His outer self shared the rough home and rough 
tasks of the loggers but his inner soul went free and 
dwelt apart. His comrades were not those with 
whom he worked and ate and slept but the “visions 
of the hills—the souls of lonely places.” Such reli¬ 
gion as he ever attained to was born that winter 
under the cold sparkle of the stars and in the snow 
locked woods. Often and often later, mingling with 
strange, surging masses of humanity, staring out at 
endless dreary reaches of sand or equally endless 
tumult of tossing, gray seas, Peter thought back to 
those solitary, pregnant hours in the forest, when, 
boy as he was, he seemed to have found a key to 
deep, eternal things, a key he never lost entirely. 

In the spring came another change. Suddenly, 




PETER IS CAUGHT 


155 


without preliminary illness of any kind, his mother 
died. Coming down from his mountain, the first 
hepaticas in his hand for her, Peter found her gone. 
It was the first great grief of his life. His father’s 
passing he had taken with a few natural tears and 
the instinctive regret we feel at the ending of some¬ 
thing to which we have long been accustomed, but it 
had not gone deep and hard as this new loss did. 
All that spring the boy groped in darkness and had 
need of all the fortitude and insight into the eternal 
truths he had learned on his mountain. He was 
more taciturn and incomprehensible than ever now 
and his fine smile flashed out but rarely. 

It was at this time that he began to wear the mask, 
at first because he was ultra-sensitive and had a 
conviction that the people around him cared nothing 
for him and could not understand things which were 
most vital to him. Later he came to wear it as a 
protection against the curious and as a source of 
ironic amusement. At eighteen he had almost trag¬ 
ically desired some one to understand. In after 
years he assiduously cultivated the trick of baffling 
people so that they could not understand, unless they 
were phenomenally clear sighted. 

All that summer, while he was hoeing potatoes, 
making hay, milking cows, doing the hundred and 
one tasks that fall upon a “farm hand,” big things 
were stirring within him. He wanted to travel. 
He wanted to begin travelling right away. There 
was a great deal to the world. It would take a long 



156 PETER S BEST SELLER 


time to see it all. He could not afford to delay 
about the important business. Now that his mother 
was no longer at hand to press the insistent claims 
of Education, the thing seemed less and less desir¬ 
able. What was Education anyway ? Did one 
learn geography out of a book or by going one’s self 
to see strange lands and the people who inhabited 
them? Did one learn history in a class room or by 
mingling with the men and women who made it, 
by haunting places big with the mighty past?— 
London—Rome—Constantinople—St. Petersburg— 
Bombay—Shanghai—these and many another sto¬ 
ried name called to him insistently, gave him no 
peace, even in his dreams. 

By September he had his plans laid. He would 
cross to England on a cattle steamer. He would 
begin with London. The rest would follow. The 
chief thing was to begin, not to postpone the call of 
the world a moment longer than was necessary. 

But just at that time in going over some of his 
mother’s papers he chanced upon a letter addressed 
to himself, a letter which set forth clearly and 
pathetically the writer’s high hopes for her son, 
hopes which one and all depended upon his securing 
that all important thing called Education. Until 
then Peter had never fully realized how much it had 
meant to her that he should have the college training 
which, though greatly coveted, had been denied his 
father. Peter was to fit himself for a profession— 
to teach, perhaps, or be a lawyer, or a doctor, or 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


157 


better still a minister—even to write books as his 
father had always desired to do and dreamed of 
doing. Education was the foundation of all these 
things. Without Education you could get but a 
little way up the hill. The son of Faith and Stephen 
Loomis must have Education at any price. That 
was the burden of the letter which was to the lad 
almost like a message from the dead. 

Quietly Peter surrendered his own dream for the 
time being to give his dead mother hers. He took 
his scanty savings which were to have started him 
on his world journey and entered college in the fall, 
continued to go indeed, for two years. There was 
much that was worth while in the experience. He 
admitted that but all the time he was conscious that 
it was not what he wanted. There was another kind 
of Education he thought—an Education that was 
not to be had from books alone or in the semi-shel¬ 
tered life of the narrow little college. At the end 
of his sophomore year, he took counsel with himself, 
and none other as was his way even then, asked his 
mother’s forgiveness, said good-bye to his few 
friends and sailed for Naples as a steward on a 
small, cheap liner. 

So began the voyages of Peter. There were few 
countries he had not visited, few seas he had not 
sailed, few tongues he had not learned to make him¬ 
self understood in, few phases of life he had not 
touched. He had broken bread with rich and poor, 
high and low, clean and unclean. He had followed 



158 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Beauty consistently, reverently, as became the son of 
his mother and scorned worldly accretion as con¬ 
sistently as became the son of his father, though a 
luckier and a better gambler at life’s gaming table 
than poor Stephen had been. He had caught 
glimpses of the one True Light in Taverns as well 
as in Temples and somehow managed to keep himself 
essentially unsullied even though mingling with the 
vile. He had not lived a saint’s life. Few live men 
have, but on the whole, his native fastidiousness, his 
sense of fitness and fair play, his worship of beauty, 
spiritual as well as physical, had served him fairly 
well in lieu of conventional standards of morality 
and saved him from excesses in any direction. 

He tried his hand at many trades, even as his 
father had done, but unlike his father, he changed 
from one to another, not because he failed in any, 
but because he succeeded so easily that it gave him 
a kind of amused contempt for the thing in hand 
and challenged him, as he told Daphne, to go on to 
the next thing. The book writing and its startling 
success was as unpremeditated as most of his varied 
career. It brought him fame and fortune, all in a 
minute as it were, a rather ironic situation inasmuch 
as he cared rather less than most men for either. 
Money had never meant much in his life, save as a 
means to other ends. Fame of the sort his books 
had brought him was more or less a farce and an 
annoyance to him. He hadn’t the smallest fancy 
for making a noise like a lion and he rather scorned 




PETER IS CAUGHT 


159 


a public that wished, upon so small a provocation, to 
lionize him. He had no illusions about his work, 
underestimated it indeed, rather than the reverse, 
judging it always ruthlessly by the measure of the 
great masters he knew and worshipped. 

Of loves also, he had had not a few, though for 
the most part the affairs involved had been of the 
most transient and experimental sort. He did be¬ 
lieve devoutly in the Magic Wood and, because he 
believed in it, he had learned with the years to be 
wary of false enchantments and not to venture over 
far beyond the border of any wilderness of senti¬ 
ment in pursuit of any will-o’-the-wisp, however 
momentarily alluring. After one or two rather dis¬ 
illusioning awakenings, for which he was chivalrous 
enough to blame himself rather than the lady in the 
case, he had lately contented himself, after a fash¬ 
ion, with a sort of Grecian Urn philosophy. Pro¬ 
vided you did not insist upon carrying an experience 
to the uttermost confines and make the fatal mistake 
of trying to lay hands on Beauty, “forever shalt 
thou love and she be fair” was the substance of his 
acquired wisdom and habit if not his nature. 

It must be admitted he had been in some danger 
of forgetting this wisdom and habit last winter. 
He had come up from Mexico, sick, depressed, 
weary beyond description, weighed down with a 
sense of failure both in his life and work, fed up 
with too much travel and the sensuous, too ardent 
advances of dark-eyed southern beauties. Crossing 



160 PETER S BEST SELLER 


his friend Gideon’s pleasant, congenial, well-ordered 
threshold, he had come suddenly upon Marian 
Somers, beautiful beyond any woman he had seen 
in all his wanderings; her cool, poised, challenging 
reserve and aloofness was like an oasis after burning 
desert sands. 

For a time he made himself her shadow, tempted 
the fates by deliberately trying to find out what lay 
behind that flawless, apparently passionless, beauty. 
As Sue had suspected, he had, in his loneliness, 
honestly tried to fit Miss Somers into the empty 
shrine of his heart. He groped vaguely for some¬ 
thing life seemed to keep from him though she 
seemed to give it freely enough to the rest of the 
world. But in the end he had had to acknowledge 
to himself that his attempt wasn’t a success. Marian 
was undeniably beautiful and fine and high bred 
and desirable but she wasn’t what he was seeking. 
She was a pearl and he adored opals, a lily when 
roses were his chosen flower, moonlight when he 
worshipped flame. 

Then had come his long and grave illness and 
when he came back at last, rather wearily to the 
land of the living, the dream was quite over for him. 
He no longer even tried to cheat himself into think¬ 
ing he loved Marian. He knew he didn’t. 

If Marian had played a little with the dream, too, 
he did not guess it as Sue guessed. If Marian had 
waited quietly half hoping that Peter Loomis would 
make her care, turn her pearl and lily and moonshine 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


161 


into opal and red roses and warm flame she made 
no sign. The queen does not stoop to sue a careless 
courtier’s affection. The queen keeps her state. 
Marian had kept her state, let Peter Loomis pass. 

Which brings us back at last to Peter in his hay 
field. A bobolink whirred past him, spiling a rol¬ 
licking cascade of music. Peter stopped his work 
to look and listen and doing so saw something else, 
namely Daphne Joyce, in cool, blue gingham and 
white sun bonnet just coming through the gate 
which opened from the orchard into the meadow. 
In her hands she bore a generous-sized brown jug 
and around her neck were strung two white porcelain 
mugs. 

Leaving Dan to browse contentedly, Peter walked 
over to greet the newcomer and a few moments 
later found the two of them comfortably ensconced 
beneath the wide spreading shade of a great maple 
tree on the hither side of the wall which ran along 
by the highway. 

Daphne poured out a mugful of her brew which 
proved to be ice cold lemonade. She handed the 
mug to Peter. He took it, held it aloft for an 
instant and then proceeded to declaim: 

"‘There was once a young man who made books, 
And sold ’em by hooks and by crooks. 

But he shed his profession, 

Made hay for a session 
And now he’s quite happy, gadzooks!” 

Daphne poured out her own lemonade with a 
smile. 



162 PETER S REST SELLER 


“You have the queerest kind of brain, Peter 
Loomis,” she said. “It is like country attics, full 
of all kinds of crazy things nobody expects to find. 
Your limericks are perfectly absurd, of course, but 
they do amuse me. I suppose it is because I neves 
knew anybody else that could make them up right 
out of a clear sky the way you do.” 

Peter smiled back imperturbably. 

“Scarcely out of a clear sky,” he corrected. “I 
fancy if the prophets examined my gray matter they 
would report cloudy if nothing more inclement. 
But we are wasting time conversing on matters 
totally irrelevant when the long awaited beverage is 
at hand.” 

He leaned forward, touching his mug to the girl’s. 

“To your health and happiness, Daphne Joyce!” 
he announced. “And to the speedy coming of the 
true Prince!” 

Daphne shook her head at that. 

“I am in no hurry for the Prince,” she said. 
“Here is to your great book, Peter Loomis! I am 
in a hurry for that.” 

And then they both drained their mugs dry. 

“That,” observed Peter as he set down the empty 
cup, “was heavenly nectar and after partaking of 
heavenly nectar I always repose a full half hour. 
Any other course would be nothing short of profane. 
Besides I want to know why you have been neglect¬ 
ing me so shamefully since Sunday.” 

“Neglected you? The idea! Didn’t I make a 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


163 


most superior chocolate cake only yesterday for 
your particular delectation ?” 

“I know. The chocolate cake was a superb crea¬ 
tion and I appreciated it down to the last crumb. 
But man cannot live by chocolate cake alone. I 
understood that you were going to amuse me every 
evening. For what else did I contract to make hay 
for Uncle Robert?” 

“It was not so nominated in the bond,” denied 
Daphne. “You know perfectly well, Peter Loomis, 
that I never made any such ridiculous bargain with 
you.” 

“Ah, but it went without saying.” 

“Lucky for you it did,” averred Daphne. “When 
do you think the haying will be done?” 

Peter poured himself another mugful of lemonade 
and remarked sadly that he feared the haying would 
be done by Saturday. 

Daphne, stooping to examine a clover patch in 
search of a four leaf, remarked that that was very 
nice. Uncle Robert would be pleased. 

“But I am not pleased,” objected Peter. “If the 
haying insists on getting done what excuse should I 
have for staying on at Uncle Robert’s? Tell me 
that.” 

“None,” agreed Daphne. “Oh, there is one!” 
she added irrelevantly. Her slim brown hand diving 
into the clover patch, triumphantly extracted a four 
leaf clover. 

Peter held out his hand for it lazily. 



164 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“Why not give it to me?” he asked. “There is 
nobody in the world who needs luck more. And I’d 
like particularly to have it as a gift of your hands, 
Daphne Joyce.” 

Daphne gazed thoughtfully, first at the four leaf, 
then at Peter. 

“You would forget who gave it to you in a 
month,” she accused. “Or have you a filing system 
for sentimental treasures you gather from your lady 
friends?” 

Peter shook his head, for once apparently not 
jesting. 

“No, I don’t forget easily, Daphne Joyce,” he 
said. “Give it to me and some day IT1 send it back 
to you just to prove I did keep it and remembered. 
Is it mine?” 

Daphne held out the sprig of green for his taking. 

“To Peter, with love from Daphne,” he prompted. 

“To Peter, with best of luck from Daphne,” she 
revised. 

Peter drew out the little black note book from his 
pocket and carefully laid the tiny symbol between 
its leaves. 

“Don’t forget that some day it will come back to 
you,” he said. “Maybe on your wedding day.” 

“I don’t think I am going to have a wedding 
day,” announced Daphne, rather surprising herself 
by her own conviction. 

Peter opened his lips to argue this but instead he 
uttered an inarticulate exclamation not at all sug- 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


105 


gestive of delight, and hastily ducked behind the 
wall. There was a queer, school-boyish, caught-in- 
the-act expression on his face. Daphne looked in 
the direction that he had been looking and caught a 
glimpse of a handsome maroon-colored touring car, 
a pleasant looking, middle-aged gentleman on the 
front seat next to the chauffeur. In the tonneau 
there were two ladies, one exquisitely fair with a 
pale blue motor veil fluttering about her lovely face, 
as clear cut and finely chiselled as a cameo. Won¬ 
dering, she turned back to Peter who was half 
reclining on the grass, supported by his elbow, and 
by this time, with a mildly amused smile in his eyes. 

“Peter, are you a deserter or an escaped criminal 
or what? You were horribly afraid those people in 
that car were going to see you. You know you were. 
Who were they?” 

“Samson, the Philistines be upon thee,” mur¬ 
mured Peter. “That, my dear Daphne, was Giddy. 
And not only Giddy but Sue and Marian. If only 
Sam had been along, it would have been the full 
phalanx of the Prescribers. Alas, we are undone! 

I might have known Giddy would ferret me out. I 
say, Daphne, you and your inestimable uncle and 
aunt wouldn’t mind committing perjury for me, 
would you ? If Giddy et al come a’seeking me at the 
parsonage, you wouldn’t mind saying that I had 
been suddenly called away by the unexpected demise 
of my second wife’s sister-in-law down in the Sand¬ 
wich Islands or some such remote parts, or that I 





166 PETER S BEST SELLER 


had inadvertently committed suicide or-” Peter 

sat up and ran his fingers through his hair in search 
of inspiration in mendacity. “I have it. Tell them 
that I am engaged in writing a novel and must on 
no account be disturbed—on no account, mind you. 
Tell ’em you won’t answer for the consequences if 
I am halted in the process. That ought to fix ’em, 
eh, Daphne, my dear?” Peter beamed contentedly 
at his own success in inventing a barricade. 

“Peter Loomis, I will do nothing of the kind. 
Nor will Uncle Robert or Aunt Lucinda. If your 
friends have motored clear up from Boston, or 
wherever it is they live, to see you, it would be 
horrid of you not to see them especially as you 
aren’t engaged in writing a novel. If you were I’d 
be willing to prevaricate to any suitable extent to 
keep you at it.” 

“By Jove, I believe you would. You would make 
a magnificent dragon to guard the entrance of the 
cave of a poor devil of a writing man. ’Pon my 
soul you would! Couldn’t you reconsider and 
marry me?” 

Daphne made an exasperated gesture and rose to 
her feet. 

“Peter, I do wish you would break yourself of 
this absurd habit of proposing. You must have 
been indulging in the vice violently for many years 
to have it so ingrained in your system. You know 
you don’t want to marry me and even if you did, 




PETER IS CAUGHT 


167 


I wouldn’t marry you. You would make a wretched 
husband.” 

“Maybe you are right,” agreed Peter regretfully. 
“And you won’t even protect me from Giddy?” 

“I will not. And it is high time you were return¬ 
ing to your labors. Give me the jug if you have 
had all the lemonade you want. I am going home 
by the road. It is cooler that way.” 

By the time Peter had gathered himself and the 
jug up, she was stepping on to the wall. Peter, too, 
stepped U£ beside her, jug in hand. As they stood 
there for an instant, clearly silhouetted against the 
blue June sky, an automobile came whirring around 
the curve in the road—the same car from which 
Peter had ducked five minutes before. The car 
halted abruptly. 

“Hi, there, Peter, old man. You are caught red 
handed. No use dodging. I saw you the first time.” 
Thus Giddy’s big, genial bass boomed out. “They 
wouldn’t believe it was you, but I was dead sure and 
made ’em come back to prove it. Come on down 
and give an account of yourself.” 

Peter salaamed with mock ceremony from the 
wall and stepping down set down the jug and turned 
back to give Daphne his hand. Perhaps it was 
partly to tease the curiosity of the occupants of the 
car, perhaps it was to tease Daphne herself, at any 
rate it was perfectly obvious that he lingered delib¬ 
erately over the performance and released the girl’s 
hand reluctantly when it was over. Introductions 



168 PETER S BEST SELLER 


followed. Daphne would have liked to have escaped, 
mindful of her sunbonnet and the absurd mugs 
strung around her neck, mindful, too, that Peter’s 
friends were looking her over rather critically and 
with keen interest, though with entire courtesy. 
Daphne, no less than Peter, was caught and had to 
go through with it. 

“Trust Peter to pick a peach!” thought Giddy. 
“His taste in ladies is perfect.” 

“What a darling!” thought Sue. “A golden girl, 
indeed. I do hope he is in earnest at last.” 

“So it is a pitik and white country miss that he 
is fancying himself in love with, this time,” thought 
Marian. “Peter is strong for variety.” 

“Are you really and truly making hay?” de¬ 
manded Sue of Peter. “We couldn’t believe it.” 

“Don’t I look it?” inquired Peter blandly. “Be¬ 
hold my garb.” He glanced down at his blue over¬ 
alls and held forth his broad brimmed rough straw 
hat in evidence. “Yonder lies the scene of my 
labors. You can see for yourself if you will but 
cast your eyes thitherward. Are you just passing 
through town?” politely. 

“Hospitable creature that you are, Peter, my 
dear,” Sue teased, entirely aware that Peter would 
quite as soon have not been overtaken with his 
golden girl at the edge of the meadow and inter¬ 
rupted brutally in his idyll, if idyll it was, as it 
appeared to be. “Indeed we are not just passing 
through town. We came on purpose to stay several 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


169 


days and to enjoy your society. We are registered 
at the Tower Hill Inn where they tell us you used 
to stay.” 

“How nice!” murmured Peter. “There is to be 
a formal hop tomorrow night, I believe. You will 
enjoy that, Giddy.” 

“A hop! Good Lord! That settles it. I’ll go 
back on the train tomorrow. I was going to any¬ 
way, but the girls are planning to stay over Sunday, 
if they find Danversville as pleasant as you seem to.” 

“Shall you be at the hop, Peter?” asked Sue. 
“Marian and I will need you if Gideon basely 
deserts us.” 

“Yes, I shall be there. Miss Joyce is going with 
me.” Peter turned to Daphne at that, making a 
little bow. There wasn’t the faintest glimmer of 
mirth or teasing in his eyes. His manner was only 
sober and respectful. But the truth of the matter 
was that, in spite of his innocent looks, he was 
launching a bomb shell. Up to that moment Daphne 
had not known there was going to be a hop, much 
less that she was going to it with Peter. 

She was furious with him for his unwarranted 
impertinence and yet absolutely powerless at the 
moment to protest. She could only accept with 
what composure she was able to summon the assur¬ 
ances of the ladies that it would be very nice for 
them all to meet at the Inn and mentally promise 
herself to punish Peter for his boldness. 

When she recovered herself sufficiently to listen 



170 PETER S BEST SELLER 


to the conversation again, they were talking about 
some poems which they had evidently all read and 
about which the Blakesleys were expressing much 
enthusiasm, and even the rather indolent Miss 
Somers roused herself to quote one line with tem¬ 
pered praise. Daphne had no means of knowing it 
was Peter’s own poems of which they were talking. 
How should she ? She did not know he had written 
any poems or could write them. 

Presently, having gotten Peter’s promise to call 
upon them at the Inn that evening, the guests de¬ 
parted, leaving Peter, Daphne and the jug and for 
the moment a’silence as stony as the jug itself. 

“I wasn’t mistaken, was I, Daphne, my dear?” 
drawled Peter. “You are coming to the hop with 
me tomorrow night, are you not?” 

“You were never more mistaken in you life, Peter 
Loomis. You needn’t think you can use me to—to 
protect you from Miss Somers. I am most dis¬ 
tinctly not going to the hop or anywhere else with 
you and I am very, very angry with you. So don’t 
try to smooth things over for I am not going to 
listen. Good-bye.” 

Picking up the jug from where Peter had set it 
in the grass, Daphne turned her back upon Peter and 
walked off down the road, her slim, blue-clad figure 
making a charming picture among the greenery 
along side the road. Peter watched her out of sight 
then slowly climbed over the wall and went back to 
Dan and the neglected hayfield. 



PETER IS CAUGHT 


171 


But his mind had lost the sublime serenity of the 
earlier afternoon. Things familiar and yet unfamil¬ 
iar were stirring within him. It was the worst of 
friends that their very friendliness challenged you 
even if they spoke no actual questions. They made 
you ask yourself, willy-nilly, where you were going 
when you didn’t at all care to determine your des¬ 
tination and wished just to drift along pleasantly 
with your voyage uncharted. 

If the girl you almost meant to marry in Novem¬ 
ber roused no single thrill in your senses or spirit 
by June, what about the girl whom you appeared to 
be falling in love with in June? And did too many 
false essays in love bewilder you, make you in¬ 
capable of recognizing the real thing when you 
found it? And after all when a man was thirty- 
eight wasn’t it time to call a halt on romantic 
caprice? No prince since fairy story world began, 
was ever so old as thirty-eight. Slow, Peter. 
Steady and slow! 




CHAPTER IX 


THE MYSTERIOUS WAYS OF WOMAN 

Daphne, dutifully serving Peter his tea that 
night, performed her ministrations with no smile 
of lips or eyes, no friendly word. She was not 
sulky. Daphne never sulked. She was simply for 
all intents and purposes a million miles away from 
a person named Peter Loomis. 

Daphne was all the angrier with Peter because 
she knew in her heart she wanted terribly to go to 
the hop—wanted it, indeed, more than anything she 
could think of at the moment. Not that Peter 
should for a moment suspect that—far from it. 

She meant to keep burning her indignation that 
he should casually take it for granted that she would 
follow any of his random whims of the moment. 
She meant Peter to feel the full weight of her dis¬ 
pleasure. 

Peter, left to his own resources, was apparently 
not in the least disconcerted or cast down. He was 
rather more talkative than usual to make up for 
Daphne’s grave silence, concentrating his conversa¬ 
tional batteries for the most part upon Uncle Robert 
with an occasional aside to Aunt Lucinda. He fell 

to relating some of his adventures in the African 

172 


WAYS OF WOMAN 


173 


jungle, adventures thrilling and unusual enough to 
make the Reverend Robert forget his food and 
listen, fascinated and absorbed to his guest’s narra¬ 
tives. In spite of herself, Daphne listened too. She 
couldn’t help it. Peter was a born story teller and 
when he chose to exert himself, he could invariably 
cast a spell upon his audience. For the moment, 
whoso listened to the tale was where Peter had been, 
was seeing what Peter had seen, and feeling the 
emotions that Peter had felt. Daphne, too, forgot 
to eat though she was angry for letting herself be 
so easily captivated, transmuted into sympathy with 
the narrator, for she shrewdly suspected that this 
was precisely what Peter had intended should 
happen, that he was talking to her all the time 
though his gaze was on her elders, meaning to dis¬ 
arm her wrath and draw her to his own side of the 
chasm, whether she would or no. What a madden¬ 
ing person he was! And would one ever know him, 
really? What was the real Peter or wasn’t there a 
real Peter at all? Was he just a harlequin playing 
part after part and smiling up his sleeve at the folly 
of any one’s being taken in by the verisimilitude of 
the temporary disguise ? 

And wondering that made Daphne suddenly re¬ 
member how his eyes had looked that Sunday 
evening out in the garden when she had fled from 
him. Nonsense! That, too, had been but part of 
the amazing game of playing Peter Loomis, a game, 
it seemed, of infinite variety. 



174 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Daphne slipped off upstairs as soon as the dishes 
were done lest she be beguiled into forgiving Peter 
for the afternoon’s misdemeanor. He sat on the 
porch awhile smoking and relapsed suddenly into 
silence. Presently, when it became clear that 
Daphne did not mean to appear, he rose and strolled 
down the gravelled pathway to the street. 

Calling upon his friends at the Inn, the eminent 
ex-author was blandly ingenuous and appeared will¬ 
ing to discuss his affairs quite openly. He had no 
idea whether he wouM write any more poems or not. 
He had no idea what possessed him to write those. 
They just came. That was all there was to it. It 
might happen again. It might not. Nobody knew, 
least of all, Peter himself. It would be wiser how¬ 
ever, he averred, if they didn’t expect it to come off 
again. It was highly improbable that it would. It 
was even more improbable that he would write 
another novel. Indeed, at the present moment, he 
was quite positive that there would be no more 
novels. He didn’t seem to be interested in writing 
novels, unfortunately. What was he interested in? 
That was a bit hard to tell, but putting it roughly, 
he thought he was interested in living chiefly. What 
was the use of bothering about novels or any such 
nonsense when you were amazingly happy and 
healthy and contented not writing them ? 

No, he had no idea when he was going away from 
Danversville. Danversville was a very healthful 
hamlet. He didn’t know when he had found a place 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


175 


so agreeable. Yes, the Keenes were thoroughly 
delightful people. No, Daphne was a niece, not a 
daughter. Her father was David Joyce, the tenor. 
Yes, the David Joyce. He ran away with Daphne’s 
mother in the good old romantic style. Oh, no, not 
that romantic. All perfectly regular, wedding cer¬ 
tificate and everything. Yes, Miss Joyce sang very 
well. Yes, she was pretty, was she not? Rather 
an unusual type. By the way how were the kids 
and the publishing business and where were Sue and 
Giddy going for their summer holiday? 

And before even clever Sue could prevent the 
detour, the conversation was gently but surely 
guided away from Peter’s concerns—if you might 
consider Daphne Joyce under that head—to other 
extraneous matters. And up to the time, not long 
after, when Peter rose to make his adieux, the con¬ 
versation had not come back to the interesting point 
from which Peter had deflected it and they all knew 
that the deflection had been deliberate. 

“Old Peter needn’t think he can muzzle me,” said 
Gideon later to his wife. “I’m going to find out 
whether there’s anything serious going on between 
him and that brown-eyed beauty of his or eat my 
hat. She’s evidently not just an everyday country 
miss if she’s David Joyce’s daughter. That makes 
a horse of another color out of it. Do you think he 
is in love with her?” 

“Maybe,” said Sue. “At least maybe he thinks 
he is. It is more probable though that he hasn’t 




176 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


thought at all—has just been enjoying living as he 
said. Peter prefers not to think usually. It’s 
easier.” 

“Well, I’m going to find out a thing or two before 
I leave this blessed burg if it is humanly possible. 
Just wait till I get him alone in his hay held at my 
mercy with no distracting females around. We’ll 
see what we shall see.” 

Accordingly the next morning, leaving his women 
folks still luxuriously en deshabille over breakfast 
served in Sue’s room, Gideon departed for the tree 
by the roadside where he had surprised Peter the 
previous afternoon taking an apparently thoroughly 
agreeable vacation from manual labor in the society 
of the brown-eyed beauty with whom he might or 
might not be in love or think he was. Perceiving 
that Peter was actually there at work in the hayfield 
clad as yesterday in the picturesque blue overalls 
and broad brimmed hat, Gideon dismissed the 
chauffeur and clambered over the wall. Once inside 
the field he made his way somewhat gingerly across 
the stubble to Peter and the sorrel colt. 

After he had caught up with the laborer and ex¬ 
changed greetings and been formally introduced to 
Dan, Gideon watched for a few moments while 
Peter continued to deposit forks-full of hay into the 
somewhat archaic looking vehicle with the high pro¬ 
truding staves around its box-like body. The process 
appeared simple enough and rather pleasant. The 
publisher began to fancy the idea of following his 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


177 


own prescription since the thing didn’t seem to be 
very strenuous or difficult, nothing but what any¬ 
body could do if he put his mind to it. Peter 
promptly acquiesced to his friend’s suggestion that 
he take a hand at the hay pitching and handed over 
the fork. 

Firmly Gideon grasped the implement and made 
a sturdy lunge at a bunch of dried grass which such 
a little while before had blown free and ashine in 
the sun and wind and now was mere lifeless, inert 
matter. 

Not so inert, however, as Gideon was to discover. 
With the proverbial cantankerousness of inanimate 
things, the hay eluded the efforts of the distin¬ 
guished publisher, sliding maliciously away from 
the prongs of the fork somewhat as spaghetti evades 
the inexperienced in an Italian restaurant. It had 
looked easy enough when Peter did it—no trick at 
all in fact. The stuff had slipped meekly and un¬ 
resistingly into the fork. What the devil was the 
matter with the thing anyway? Why didn’t it act 
that way for him instead of behaving as if it were 
bewitched? Gideon made another vicious jab. The 
hay veered maddeningly in another direction. The 
publisher leaned the fork against his body and taking 
out his handkerchief mopped his perspiring brow, 
taking a sidelong glance at the silent Peter as he 
did so. 

Peter’s face expressed the most imperturbable 
gravity. Gideon resented the gravity even more 



178 PETER S BEST SELLER 


than he would have resented ridicule or thought he 
did. He made another unavailing attack upon the 
hay. The sorrel colt turned his head and gazed with 
mild curiosity at the novice, a glance which it seemed 
to the sensitive, would-be haymaker contained more 
than a modicum of patronizing amusement. This 
was too much. He would not be made sport of by 
a country nag—a parson’s nag at that. With dig¬ 
nity Gideon returned the fork to Peter. 

“It seems to require a certain—er—knack,” he 
observed. “No doubt I could master it in time but 
I am afraid I haven’t time this morning.” 

Peter lifted a large forkful of hay and deposited 
it deftly in the archaic vehicle. The sorrel colt 
stooped and gathered in a mouthful of fresh cut 
grass and returned to the contemplation of the land¬ 
scape while he munched his treasure placidly and 
with evident satisfaction. It almost looked, Gideon 
thought, as if the colt might be thinking that now 
everything was all right, his supervision would no 
longer be required. 

“There is nothing like manual labor as you have 
so often said,” murmured Peter genially. 

Gideon groaned and mopped his brow again. 

“Confound it! You needn’t rub it in, Peter. I 
get the point all right. Manual labor is well enough 
if you know how to turn the trick. If you don’t, 
you make yourself about as ridiculous as an octoge¬ 
narian making love to sweet sixteen. I surrender. 
Sue said there was more to this haymaking stunt 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


179 


than I knew and apparently she is right. I take off 
my hat to you. Wherever and however you learned 
the art you appear to be master of it. I say, old 
man, must you keep at this infernal business all the 
morning or can you stop and have a talk with me?” 

“You can ride in on the load with me and we can 
talk then,” suggested Peter. “In the meantime I 
commend yon hospitable maple tree to you. You 
appear to be somewhat heated.” 

“Heated isn’t the word!” muttered the publisher. 
“I’m hotter ’n ’ell. Very well, the maple tree it is, 
until such time as your lordship has an ear for your 
humble servant.” 

It was pleasantly cool under the maple and a 
fresh little breeze came obligingly up from the little 
river in the distance to minister to the comfort of 
the disconcerted gentleman who stretched himself in 
the shade to await the haymaker’s pleasure and the 
dubious adventure of “riding in” on the load, a 
process which Gideon somewhat misdoubted as 
being conducive to intimate conversation. Con¬ 
found old Peter, anyway! He was a slick one. 

Gideon had not been five minutes under the maple 
before he began to be insensibly soothed and tran¬ 
quil. Things that had seemed of very vital import 
a little while ago somehow drifted off into the limbo 
of comparative triviality. There was something 
about the clover-scented breeze and the jargon of 
bobolinks that gave you a different slant on life 
from what you got in the city. And those blue hills 



180 PETER S REST SELLER 


over there in the distance! Jove! What a color! 
And what an amazing serenity! Made you think 
of something in the Bible somewhere—some psalm 
or other. The whole June morning was rather like 
a psalm itself, come to think of it. It made you 
feel as if you were blessed and re-created. 

Suddenly Gideon found himself wanting Sue 
uncommonly. They must get away together soon— 
into the country—away from folks. This living 
always in a rush and scramble was hideous—killing. 
The eminent publisher put out a hand and picked a 
tall black-eyed Susan which was growing close beside 
him and seemed to be smiling approvingly upon his 
meditations. A homely, companionable, pleasant 
sort of flower that—no pretense about it—a little 
like happy, everyday married life, he thought. 

Over the flower he gazed meditatively at Peter 
and his mind suddenly returned to his errand to the 
hayfield. What had been his errand anyway—to 
warn Peter against marriage with this wild rose 
child—to advise him that it wouldn’t do? But why 
wouldn’t it do? The girl was like the morning— 
fresh and fragrant and natural. Perhaps after all, 
she was more likely to be what Peter needed than a 
more sophisticated product of the so-called culture 
of cities—a hot-house person like Marian. 

‘‘Ready!” hailed Peter. “Load’s full.” 

Gideon rose and approached the hay cart and the 
too knowing sorrel. The nearer he got, the less he 
hankered to be on top. The load looked alarmingly 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


181 


high. He wondered if hay loads ever took a notion 
to spill over. He could not see that there was any¬ 
thing whatever to guarantee that the whole thing 
might not come avalanching earthward without 
warning. And how the deuce did you get up on top 
of the thing anyway? 

But Gideon did not propose to have Peter make 
sport of his dignity twice in one morning. Conse¬ 
quently he swallowed his trepidations and with the 
aid of his friend’s right hand mounted gallantly, if 
a little cumbersomely, to the crest of the fragrant 
mass where he seated himself cautiously in what 
looked to be the centre of the thing. The sorrel colt 
looked disturbingly far away and the good, solid 
earth ten times farther. 

Nor did it tend to ease his sensations to discover 
that they were to drive not only over the stubbly 
meadow but through the neighboring orchard. It 
would be bad enough to ride in such a precarious 
position on a regular well-travelled road but to do 
it dodging in and out of tree branches over uneven, 
unmarked ground looked to Gideon at best like tak¬ 
ing one’s life in one’s hands. As for talking—that 
was utterly out of the question. Not for anything 
would Gideon have distracted Peter from his guid¬ 
ance of the sorrel colt through the devious ways of 
the orchard. And in any case he was sufficiently 
occupied in maintaining his own equilibrium on top 
of the load and seeing that he wasn’t brained by a 
malicious apple tree bough. 




182 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


By the grace of God, however, the journey ended 
in safety and Gideon heaved a profound sigh of 
relief as the cart jolted over the threshold of the 
Reverend Robert’s barn. 

Peter stepped down from the load and put up his 
hand to assist the other to follow suit. As the latter 
stood at last firmly upon the safe levels of the barn 
floor, Peter remarked with a twinkle, “Don’t worry, 
old dear. She has refused me. It is quite all right 
I assure you.” 

Gideon gasped and looked a bit disconcerted. Of 
course, he might have known Peter would know 
what he had up his sleeve all the time. Peter’s 
intuition was the very devil. You couldn’t fool him 
if you wanted to. You might as well not want to. 

So it had come to that. Peter the susceptible had 
overcome Peter the cautious and actually proposed. 
Gideon had a shrewd suspicion that it was a good 
many years since his friend had taken a risk like 
that. And the girl had had the sense to refuse him. 
Did Peter mind? Or was he relieved that a rash 
moment had been rendered immune by the girl’s 
superior wisdom? Gideon would have given a 
pretty penny to know the answer to these questions 
but a glance at Peter's blandly inscrutable counte¬ 
nance warned him that he was more than likely to 
remain in ignorance of these things. 

“She did?” he observed. “That’s surprising. I 
am rather sorry. I rather fancy it would have been 
a good thing if she had taken you.” As this was 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


183 


not at all what Gideon had taken the pains to go to 
the hayfield to say, it merely proves what the 
meadow and the breeze and the blue hills and the 
black-eyed Susans had done to him. 

Peter shrugged. 

“Unfortunately Daphne doesn’t think so. She 
told me only yesterday that I would make a 
wretched husband, in which assumption I am obliged 
to admit she is presumably entirely correct.” 

“But are you in love with her?” persisted Gideon. 

“Naturally. Isn’t one always in love with a 
pretty girl in June? It’s an entirely seasonable state 
of mind. But marrying is quite another proposi¬ 
tion.” 

Which was so precisely what Gideon had intended 
to make clear to Peter from the beginning, that it 
was rather unreasonable of him to be disposed to 
argue on the other side of the fence now. But in 
any case, argument wasn’t possible, for Peter had 
by this time definitely dismissed the subject and was 
tranquilly feeding Dan lumps of sugar as if the 
performance were his sole interest in life at the 
moment. 

Baffled, the publisher accepted defeat and, paying 
his farewells, departed leaving Peter to the unload¬ 
ing of his hay. Passing out of the Reverend Rob¬ 
ert’s gate, Gideon heard his friend’s cheerful whistle 
coming from the barn and recognized the air as 
Filena’s from Mignon delivered with a carefree 
abandon which rivalled the bobolinks’ own in the 



184 PETER’S REST SELLER 


meadow. Gideon shook his head. If he had any 
secret, romantic notions that Peter might be cher¬ 
ishing at least a temporary heartache under his 
lightness of manner, he was forced to abandon the 
fancy, then and there. No man possessed of any 
kind of ache, mental, emotional or physical, could 
whistle like that. Peter was hopeless. Gideon gave 
him up. 

As Daphne came downstairs a little later to start 
the midday meal, the telephone in the hall jangled 
sharply. It was Angela, an Angela evidently fairly 
bursting with excitement and the desire to impart 
news—great news. Miss Somers—the famous Miss 
Somers whose picture was in the Sunday supple¬ 
ments—had just called upon Aunt Sophia with Mrs* 
Blakesley, the wife of the publisher. It seemed that 
Miss Somers’ aunt had once gone to boarding school 
with Aunt Sophia and had asked her niece to look 
the latter up. Their car was simply splendid. It 
had looked gorgeous standing outside the door. All 
the neighbors had stuck their heads out of the doors 
to look at it. But what Angela had called Daphne 
up to tell her—she just had to tell some one, she 
was so excited—was that Mrs. Blakesley had invited 
her and Jimmy to the hop at the Inn that night. 
Wasn’t that just too wonderful for anything? 
Hardly anybody in Danversville ever got invitations 
to things up there. They were so exclusive. All 
the girls would be simply green with envy when they 
heard about it. 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


185 


“I do wish you were coming too,” cooed Angela. 
“I wanted to ask Mrs. Blakesley if I couldn’t bring 
you since she had met you. But I was afraid she 
would think I was presuming if I did. You have 
to be so careful with people like that you know. 
Anyway I’ll come over tomorrow and tell you all 
about it.” 

Up to this point Daphne, with her ear to the re¬ 
ceiver and her lips pursed ominously, had listened 
with scarcely an interruption to Angela’s artless flow 
of enthusiasm and superlatives. But with this last 
bit of exasperating patronage, the camel’s back 
sagged, bent, broke. 

“That is awfully sweet of you,” came Daphne’s 
cool, musical voice over the wire. “But you won’t 
need to tell me about it for I am going myself with 
Mr. Loomis.” 

There was a faint spluttering sound at the other 
end of the line. Then- 

“You are? How lovely! I had no idea. Mr. 
Loomis begins to look quite serious. We’ll have to 
be giving you a shower next. Aren’t you just crazy 
about tonight ? I am. I simply can’t decide whether 
to wear my blue charmeuse or the canary taffeta or 
the white georgette with the silver beads. There 
will be such wonderful gowns there, of course. 
They dress fit to kill even for the informal dances 
up there, I hear. And I want to look my nicest so 
as not to disgrace Mrs. Blakesley and—and Jimmy. 
What are you going to wear?” 




186 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


Fortunately the telephone, ingenious instrument 
that it is, has not yet devised a means of reproducing 
the facial expressions of those whose voices pur¬ 
posely convey very different emotions from the ones 
they are actually experiencing. 

Daphne’s tranquil “I haven’t decided yet, either,” 
gave no hint of the wry look on her face as she 
transmitted the words. For with Angela’s ques¬ 
tion, Daphne realized with a sick sensation that she 
had let herself be goaded into an alarming predica¬ 
ment, for there were no canary taffetas or white 
georgettes or blue charmeuses in her wardrobe. 
Indeed there wasn’t the veriest ghost of a gown that 
would be appropriate for the dance on the Hill. 
Evening gowns, as such, were not required by the 
normal exigencies of Danversville’s simple social 
life. 

Having finally cut off the current of Angela’s 
coos and questions, Daphne proceeded to the kitchen 
and scrubbed the potatoes for baking with an absent- 
minded energy which threatened to wear out their 
skins in advance. She was not thinking about pota¬ 
toes. She was thinking what an unqualified idiot 
she had been to let herself get in such a trap. 

“You have certainly put your foot in it,” she 
scolded herself. “You haven’t a single thing fit to 
wear and you know it. So does Angela, I bet, which 
was precisely why she inquired so sweetly. Oh 
damn!” 

The potatoes went into the oven. The oven door 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


187 


went shut with a bang. The clock on the mantel 
droned out twelve slow, admonitory strokes. 
Daphne whirled around and shook her fist at it. 

“Oh, I know. You needn’t remind me. They 
ought to have been in half an hour ago. Peter will 
have to wait for his dinner, that is all. Good enough 
for him. He can charge it to Angela.” 

Nevertheless by the time Peter arrived at the 
house and made himself cool and presentable after 
his morning’s labors, dinner was ready for him, 
though Daphne, herself, was invisible. 

“I am too hot to eat now,” she had explained to 
her aunt. “Til come down later after I’ve cooled 
off. Don’t wait for me. I’m not hungry anyway.” 
And she had fled upstairs hastily lest she meet Peter. 
She wasn’t at all sure what she should say to him 
when she did see him. Of course, he didn’t deserve 
to have her go to the dance with him and she didn’t 
see how she could go even if he did, in the Flora 
MacFlimsey state of her wardrobe. Still there was 
Angela and there was her own fatal statement that 
she was going to the hop and with Peter. These 
things had to be reconciled somehow, though for the 
life of her she couldn’t see how it was to be done. 

Upstairs she bathed her hot cheeks and, divesting 
herself of her gingham morning gown, slipped into 
a cool flower-sprigged dimity negligee and sat down 
by the window to think. 

Every bit of her vivid youth cried out in favor 
of the dance. She wanted to go dreadfully. She 





188 PETER S BEST SELLER 


knew that if she could muster up a gown to go in, 
she would make shift to forgive Peter if for no 
other reason than to pay Angela back for her pa¬ 
tronage. But what was the use? Cinderella she 
was. Cinderella she must remain. And there were 
no fairy godmothers any more than there were fairy 
princesses in Danversville. She must get what she 
wanted by exercise of sheer Yankee wit or go with¬ 
out. That was clear. 

Her gaze fell on a little gold framed picture of 
her mother upon the dresser. A delicate, oval face, 
a round, softly moulded neck rising above folds of 
lace, lips parted with a faint suggestion of a smile, 
dark eyes smiling too, though a shade wistful and 
dreamy, as if she were asking a question she could 
not answer of a world which would not speak. 

“You look awfully sweet in that gown,” sighed 
her daughter. “I wish I had one half as pretty.” 

And then inspiration came. Up in the attic was 
a whole trunkful of her mother’s things—gowns, 
slippers, fans, scarfs—all the fascinating parapher¬ 
nalia of femininity. Often and often, Daphne had 
taken them out and handled them reverently and 
dreamed over them, but never once until now had 
it occurred to her to make use of any of the store 
for her own needs. They had always seemed too 
sacred even to “dress up” in, though like every smal] 
girl since time began, she had delighted, in her child¬ 
hood, to trail around in grown up finery and mas¬ 
querade at being grown up. 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


189 


Now she was really grown up and wanted pretty 
things as a woman craves them. And here was a 
whole trunkful of them at her command, mag*- 
ically ready for her need. The fairy godmother 
might be invisible but she was on the job, just the 
same, even in Danversville and the twentieth cen¬ 
tury. Praise be! 

Daphne lifted the sweet pictured face and touched 
it with her warm young lips. 

“You don’t mind, do you, mother dearest?” she 
crooned. “You would like to have me wear some¬ 
thing of yours wouldn’t you? And I—why I’d 
rather wear your dear things than anything I could 
buy even if I had all the money in the world to buy 
them with. If only there is something that will do 
for me. There has just got to be, so there.” 

It was hot up in the garret and a yellow jacket 
buzzed ominously over Daphne’s head as she knelt 
a moment later before the old trunk, removing the 
papers her own loving hands had placed over the 
treasures within. Neither heat nor hornets could 
distract her from her purpose. 

It was rather a pathetic chest in one way. All 
the way from Italy it had come to the sober old 
parsonage, full of shimmering parti-colored dresses 
and all kinds of lovely accessories. Ruth Joyce had 
adored and well became pretty trappings and her 
husband had equally adored to deck her in them. 
The pretty trappings were still there, still pretty 
after all the years, but she who had worn them was 




190 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


gone elsewhere, on a far journey for which one 
needs no shining silks and furbishings. Only the 
dainty raiment which had once enveloped her warm, 
quick, lovely young body was left to perpetuate her 
memory and bring the tears to her daughter’s eyes. 

Gently but with tense eagerness, Daphne explored 
the contents of the trunk, taking out one gown after 
another, smoothing their ruffles, straightening a love 
knot here or there, patting the soft yellowed laces 
into place. She laid out rows of cunning, friv¬ 
olous, high heeled slippers, unwrapped from their 
crumpled tissues fans and scarfs and silken stock¬ 
ings and underwear. She had seen the whole array 
many times, knew each one of the pretty accessories 
intimately, but somehow it seemed different this 
time as if she brought new vision and understand¬ 
ing to them, as if she had at last caught up with her 
young mother, entered for the first time, into true 
and full communion of spirit with the other woman. 
She comprehended, as she never had before, how 
Ruth Joyce had been able to put everything which 
life had hitherto meant to her aside, to try a strange, 
new kingdom with the man she loved. It had per¬ 
haps been always as a little girl that Daphne had 
gone to the trunk before. Now she came to the 
shrine a woman grown, a woman who seemed all 
at once to understand what love was or might be. 

Daphne stooped and picked up a slender, black 
satin slipper, crusted over with jet and steel beads. 
It was a delectable slipper, a worldly slipper, an 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


191 


understanding slipper, a slipper which looked as if 
it could entirely comprehend how a girl’s young 
spirit might rebel against a world of sameness, and 
desire to take the opportunity the gods held out to 
try something different—wonderfully, magically 
different! 

Off came her shabby pump. On went the slender 
black satin creation. It fitted perfectly, just as the 
lost slipper fitted on Cinderella’s foot in the hands 
of the true Prince. 

Daphne got to her feet, pirouetted round on the 
toe of the satin slipper, eyed it delightedly and with 
elation. 

“I told you so!” she exclaimed aloud as if some 
person or persons unknown had dourly warned her 
that she never in the world could get the slipper on 
her foot, much less dance in it. “It’s perfect. 
Couldn’t fit me better if I’d had it made to order. 
That settles it. I am going to the hop and you are 
going to the hop and we’ll dance and dance till there 
isn’t any music left to dance to.” 

A few moments later Aunt Lucinda met her niece 
in the hall, her arms full of treasures disinterred 
from the travelled black trunk. 

“Land sakes alive, child! What under the canopy 
are you going to do with all those? Make a rain¬ 
bow ?” 

Daphne laughed happily. 

“Just that,” she agreed. “And when said rain¬ 
bow is duly evolved to my satisfaction, I am mean- 



192 PETER S BEST SELLER 


ing to deck me therein and betake myself to the hop 
at the Tower Hill Inn this evening with your kind 
permission. ” 

“H-mp! My kind permission seems to be some¬ 
thing of an afterthought, and with whom are you 
going, if I may make so bold as to inquire?” 

“Peter.” And though nothing was farther from 
her intentions or expectations, Daphne blushed as 
she said the name, a blush which her aunt noted with 
some consternation. 

What under the sun was Daphne blushing about? 

Not that she asked the question aloud. What she 
actually said was, “Aren’t you going to eat any 
dinner?” 

“Dinner! What is dinner? I haven’t time for 
such earthly things, if my rainbow is to get done 
in time.” 

“Rainbow or no rainbow, you will go straight 
downstairs and get some food into you before you 
are five minutes older. There is ham on the back 
of the stove and biscuits in the oven and what’s 
left of the pudding is on the side board.” 

Daphne reluctantly deposited her makings of a 
rainbow on the bed in her own room and descended 
the stairs. Ham and biscuits and pudding do in¬ 
trude now and then into the really serious business 
of life, unimportant as they may seem to be in 
youth’s reckoning. 

In the kitchen Daphne found the aforesaid articles 
of food. She also found what she had not expected 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


193 


to find—Peter Loomis who had returned to get a 
drink of water before repairing to the hayfield. 
He smiled at her over the tin dipper. 

“Thank the Lord you’re here,” he observed. 
“You are more vanishing than the Cheshire cat 
lately. Don’t you eat any more? I didn’t see you 
at breakfast and all during dinner I kept my eye on 
the door hoping you would come through it, but 
you never did.” 

“Oh, yes, I eat,” said Daphne. “As witness I 
have come foraging this minute. I happened to be 
busy when the rest of you ate. That’s all.” 

“M-m? Is it? I wonder,” mused Peter as he 
hung up the dipper. “It wasn’t that you were en¬ 
deavoring consistently to avoid me then? I had a 
fancy it might be.” 

“Well, what if it was,” said Daphne. “Didn’t 
you deserve it?” 

“That is as may be. The main point is, am I 
forgiven ?” 

“You certainly don’t deserve to be forgiven— 
still-” 

“Still, all things considered-” grinned Peter. 

“You see you really do want to go to the hop. 
Isn’t that the truth, Daphne Joyce?” 

“Possibly,” admitted Daphne, stooping to re¬ 
arrange the bowl of pansies on the dining room 
table. 

“That being the case, let’s begin over again and 
do the thing in better style. Considering the past 






194 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


expunged, erased from the tables of our minds, I now 
have the honor to ask Miss Joyce if she will deign 
to honor Mr. Peter Loomis by accompanying him 
to a dance to be given Thursday evening, June, etc., 
etc. R. S. V. P ” 

Daphne lifted her eyes and when Peter saw that 
the mirth imps were present in full force he knew 
he was forgiven though what circumstances had 
brought the good fortune, he was unable to surmise. 

“Miss Joyce accepts with pleasure Mr. Peter 
Loomis’ kind invitation,” replied Daphne. “Now 
do run on, Peter. Pm going to be fearfully busy 
all the afternoon and I’ve got to e^at and run and 
can’t be bothered.” 

Peter saluted and obediently departed, serenely 
content with the turn of events and carrying with 
him a very satisfactory picture of Daphne’s charm¬ 
ing, flushed face and slim young form, clad in the 
pink sprigged negligee. 

That afternoon while Marian Somers indulged 
in beauty sleep Sue escorted Gideon to the station 
where he was to take the train back to the city leav¬ 
ing the ladies with the car. She chuckled over his 
account of his morning’s somewhat fruitless inter¬ 
view with the exasperating Peter and in turn related 
her own gleanings. 

“I gathered, upon judicious pumping, that the 
excellent if somewhat acid Madame Danvers doesn’t 
care very much for Peter’s Daphne, the reason pos¬ 
sibly being that her son, James, who enters every 



WAYS OF WOMAN 


195 


other minute or so in his mother’s conversation, 
cares rather too much for her. We were escorted 
up to his room to see a picture of Marian’s aunt and 
Mrs. Danvers in the pigtail stage. The picture 
wasn’t very interesting but the other pictures in the 
room were. There was Daphne Joyce in a large 
silver frame over son James’ desk, Daphne Joyce in 
an oval of enamel forget-me-nots on his dresser, 
Daphne Joyce in snap shots and groups all over the 
walls! Looks as if our Peter were trespassing on 
son James’ preserves, for better or worse, though I 
believe that is the least of Madame Mother’s wor¬ 
ries. She evidently is pinning all her hopes on the 
pretty little doll-faced thing she calls Angela who 
seems to be on a permanent visit. I had an inspira¬ 
tion to get them all together tonight and see for 
myself what was going on all round. It will amuse 
me if it doesn’t have any other results.” 

Gideon chuckled. 

“Trust you,” he said. “It looks as if you had 
got the stage set for quite a pretty little show. Go 
to it. Peter says the girl has refused him but I’ve 
a notion he doesn’t intend to stay refused. Keep 
an eye on the two of them and tell me what you 
make of it.” 




CHAPTER X 


DAPHNE EVOLVES A RAINBOW 

While Sue was seeing Gideon off at the station 
in wife-like fashion, Daphne was engaged in a 
serious consideration of the rainbow possibilities 
she had collected from the trunk in the attic. The 
choice had simmered down to those three gowns 
which would lend themselves best to a speedy 
adaptation to the need of the moment. One was a 
diaphanous shell pink tulle, one was a turquoise 
brocade trimmed with silver lace and the last, a 
cream colored net, with rows and rows of tiny 
ruffles, its only bit of color being a sea-green girdle. 

It was in solemn contemplation of these three 
that Mrs. Keene found her niece, when she popped 
her head in to the bedroom, pausing on her way to 
a Ladies’ Aid meeting. 

Daphne whirled around with a welcoming smile. 

“Thank goodness! I was just going to call you. 

Don’t tell me you were going out. Ladies’ Aid 

begins at home. I need you most. Pray let me 

escort you to a seat. You and I have to decide 

instantly which of these garments is best suited to 

the purpose of making me the most charming young 

person at the hop tonight. Other times, other 

196 


A RAINBOW 


197 


chances, for other girls. This is my one and only 
opportunity. Behold the modern Cinderella.” 

Aunt Lucinda grunted but permitted herself to 
be marshalled to the cretonned rocker and to have 
her hat removed and deposited at a safe distance 
on the dresser. After all Daphne was right. She 
could make pajamas for the heathen any time. It 
was not every day there was a rainbow in the build¬ 
ing right under one’s own roof. If the child was 
going to the dance she must have the right kind 
of clothes. That was certain. Aunt Lucinda’s 
pride was up. 

“Here’s for the pink one. Isn’t it a love? Mother 
must have been a dream in it. I do hope it’s big 
enough for me. Aren’t those pink and blue roses 
the dearest things?” 

Over her head it went, eclipsing conversation 
for the moment. The color was exquisite and 
brought out the girl’s wild rose complexion mar¬ 
vellously. But, alas, Ruth had been built on a 
slighter mould than her vigorous, athletic, young 
daughter and the mode was of the clinging style 
which left no margins for alterations. It was a 
love of a gown, indeed, but it was not for Daphne’s 
wearing. The mirror reflected a crestfallen, dis¬ 
appointed face. Slowly and with her jubilance 
abated, Daphne turned to her aunt. 

If the mirror had not told the truth frankly, 
Aunt Lucinda’s crisp comment would have left 
no room for doubt. 



198 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“Mercy, child! You look like a chicken just 
come in out of the wet. Ruth must have been 
slighter than I remembered. It's a sight on you." 

Soberly Daphne divested herself of the pink 
tulle. What if none of the dresses would do after 
all? What if she had to go in her Sunday dimity 
or stay at home? Well, she would stay at home 
that was all. And she would die before she would 
let either Peter or Angela know why she stayed. 
She would sprain her ankle, get small pox or any¬ 
thing rather than admit the truth at this late date. 

She picked up the turquoise brocade. The very 
touch of its shimmering lustrous fabric sent a 
Sybaritic thrill through her. And what a gorgeous 
color—as blue as the very Italian skies under which 
she had been born, Daphne thought. Hope leaped 
anew. It was so beautiful—so beautiful it just 
must do—so there. 

Mindful of the first disillusioning experience, 
however, she kept sternly away from the mirror 
and even turned her back on Aunt Lucinda during 
the hooking up process. She didn’t want to be dis¬ 
couraged unnecessarily at the very start. The hook¬ 
ing went so easily it was a good omen. Why it was 
almost loose, instead of clinging tight like the tulle! 
Hope leaped higher, almost sure of its right to 
rejoice. 

The first hesitant peep at the mirror was pro¬ 
longed to a long, bewildered, entranced stare. For 
the mirror gave back, astonishingly enough, an 




A RAINBOW 


199 


entirely different person from the Daphne Joyce 
that she was accustomed to see, framed in its oval. 
She was not used to seeing a person with lovely, 
round arms, bare to the shoulder, showing alluring 
curves and dimples. She was not used to seeing 
the smooth, white shoulders themselves, all uncov¬ 
ered down to her full young bosom. But most of 
all, she was not used to seeing in her mirror a girl 
so amazingly, undeniably beautiful. She stood 
staring at her own changeling image, startled, en¬ 
chanted, with a kind of rapt admiration which was 
utterly devoid of any personal vanity. It was as 
if her involuntary admiration were such as she 
might have bestowed upon a beautiful work of art, 
a statue or painting in a museum. Indeed she could 
hardly make herself believe it was Daphne Joyce 
that she was beholding. Daphne Joyce was no such 
raving beauty as this. 

“Turn around. Let me look at you,” ordered 
Aunt Lucinda. 

Daphne obeyed, her cheeks flushed, her eyes 
ashine and excited. 

“Good gracious! It is even worse from the 
front. Isn’t there a guimpe or something? There 
must be. It is disgraceful as it is.” 

Daphne shook her head, her color deepening a 
little. 

“I think not,” she said. “I rather think it was 
meant to be worn this way.” She turned back to 
the mirror, surveying herself with new-born self- 



200 PETER S BEST SELLER 


consciousness. “I suppose there isn’t enough to it,” 
she sighed. “But it is becoming, isn’t it?” she 
appealed to the beauty in the mirror. 

“H-mp! Not my idea of becomingness,” sniffed 
her aunt. “I am surprised at Ruth. In charity, 
I prefer to think that there must have been a 
guimpe somewhere that didn’t get packed. Anyway, 
guimpe or no guimpe, no niece of mine is going to 
stir one step out of this house wearing a waist that 
is nothing more nor less than a sash and a bit of 
lace and two straps of ribbon. Take it off this 
moment. It is a sin to wear such clothes. I don’t 
know what your uncle would say if he saw you 
wearing it.” 

Reluctantly Daphne did as she was bid. Aunt 
Lucinda was right, of course. She couldn’t wear 
a gown like that, no matter how becoming it was. 
She wouldn’t have felt comfortable in it. Still she 
was glad she had tried it on and seen for herself 
that she could be a really truly beauty with the right 
—well, no, Aunt Lucinda would probably say it 
was the wrong—kind of clothes on. Suddenly she 
found herself wondering what Peter would have 
thought of her in that gown and that thought set 
the color flaming again in her cheeks. 

Hastily she undid the last hook and the brocade 
fell in a splendid, sensuous swirl of color and grace 
at her feet. Soberly Daphne stepped out of the 
swirl and laid it with the pink tulle already dis¬ 
carded upon the foot of the bed and looking very 



A RAINBOW 


201 


wan and meek and insignificant beside the turquoise 
brocade’s gorgeousness. 

Not very hopefully she donned the beruffled net, 
and having finished tying the sea green sash, she 
looked, not at the mirror, but at Aunt Lucinda. 
After all it was Aunt Lucinda who was the ultimate 
destiny of the rainbow, not the mirror or Daphne 
herself. 

But this time Aunt Lucinda nodded vigorous 
approval. 

“There, now, that is something like,” she declared. 
“You look like a nice, modest, young girl instead 
of a play actress or something worse. There is a 
good wide hem we can let down if it is a bit too 
short and we can loosen it under the sash. Look 
at it yourself. See if you don’t think it is nice.” 

Daphne looked. What she saw this time was no 
longer a raving beauty but a pretty girl, prettily 
and becomingly attired in a gown which was just 
quaint enough to look like the very latest of modes, 
neither too low nor too high in the neck, too long 
or short of sleeve. It would really do wonderfully. 
Combined with the silk stockings and beaded slip¬ 
pers and the black silk evening cloak lined with rose 
and her mother’s pearls it would make a toilet that 
even Angela might envy. And Peter would like 
it. Somehow Daphne was sure of that and was 
glad. 

All the rest of the afternoon she snipped and 
tacked and basted and pressed, singing gay little 



202 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


snatches of songs as she worked. Things were 
beginning to happen at last, even in Danversville. 
Perhaps she wove other rainbows than material ones 
that June afternoon as her fancy flitted hither and 
thither like a bright winged butterfly. Oh, yes, it 
was good to be young and to be going to dance, 
dance, dance! 

Once again more important matters compelled 
her to skip supper with the family. Peter, lingering 
on the porch, smoking a trio of post-prandial 
cigarettes, waited in vain for her appearance and 
finally betook himself upstairs to dress for the 
evening. When he came down again, looking only 
a little less tall and distinguished in his conventional 
garb than he did in his hayfield regalia, Uncle 
Robert still held the porch in solitude. The ladies 
were evidently still engaged. 

At exactly half past eight the screen door opened 
and Aunt Lucinda, plump and comely in dark blue 
polka dotted lawn, stepped out. And behind her 
came Daphne. Peter getting to his feet caught his 
breath sharply on seeing her. He had thought the 
time was long since past when a girl’s sudden pres¬ 
ence could make his heart come up into his mouth 
like that. For once, like Bassanio, he was bereft 
of words and for much the same good reason. 

Perhaps his eyes said all that was necessary, 
however, for meeting his gaze, Daphne turned 
swiftly away from it and went to where her uncle 



A RAINBOW 


203 


sat, Mrs. Lucinda following close behind, like a 
proud tug boat convoying a yacht. 

'‘How do you like me, Uncle Bobbetts?” asked 
Daphne, making a little-girl courtsey before him 
and using her little-girl pet name. 

“I like you very much, my dear. I always do 
even when you are not dressed for a party. Bless 
me, where did all this finery come from?” Cautiously 
and with masculine reverence, he fingered a crisp 
ruffle, took in the daintiness of the sea green sash, 
the smartness of the satin slippers. 

“Out of the black trunk,” confessed Daphne. 
“Mother’s trunk, you know. You don’t think she 
would mind, do you, Uncle Robert?” a little 
anxiously. 

“I am sure she would be very happy. If only 
she could see you now,” he sighed. 

His gaze travelled from the slippers up again to 
the lovely, young face and a sudden rush of emotion 
overtook him, threatening to dim his sight. Ruth’s 
little girl! And grown up! Very much a woman, 
with all her mother’s charm which counted even 
more than beauty, and a kind of spring-like radiance 
which was all her own. 

He felt strangely upset for the moment as if 
something had come upon him unawares, something 
rather disturbing, something that had to be coped 
with here and now. He had not thought until now 
that Daphne was really grown up. It seemed as if 



204 PETER S BEST SELLER 


the thing had happened overnight, as it were, as a 
rose blooms out of the bud in June. 

Sensitive always to his moods Daphne bent over 
him, the smile dying out of her brown eyes. 

“What is it? Do you mind my going? I won't 
if you don't want me to." 

“Of course, I want you to go, child. It was just 
that it came over me that we had lost our little girl. 
She has gone and grown up as little girls will.” 

“Of course, I’m your little girl,” she denied. 
“I’ll never be anything else as long as I live.” 

He smiled at that and patted her cheek gently. 
But he knew better. He knew that Daphne was 
slipping away from him, into a new kingdom, where 
he and Lucinda in their sober, middle-agedness 
could not follow. Was she going alone or was 
Peter Loomis taking her with him? He couldn’t 
help feeling that Peter had something to do with 
Daphne’s sudden grown-upness. Jimmy Danvers 
had never made her grow up—never in the world. 

“Land’s sake, you two!” ejaculated Aunt Lu¬ 
cinda. “Don’t keep Mr. Loomis waiting like that 
while you bill and coo. It is most bedtime now 
and you haven’t even started for the party. Good¬ 
ness knows when you will get home at that rate.” 

Daphne laughed at this protest and looked at 
Peter who was still standing just as he had risen 
when she came out on the porch and his eyes had 
told her he approved of her gown, or was it the 
girl inside the gown he had approved? 



A RAINBOW 


205 


“Come on then, Peter, if Aunt Lucinda insists 
on turning us out—that is, of course, if you are 
sure you don’t mind going with a twenty-year old 
gown now you know the dark secret.” 

Peter came out of his trance. 

“It looks to me like an unusually delectable 
affair,” he said, “whether it came out of a black 
trunk or was conceived out of ether at the wave 
of a fairy godmother’s wand. I’ve got a Jehu 
waiting without unless you would rather walk. It 
is really rather a fairy night. Want to try it afoot 
or will it spoil the slippers?” He glanced down at 
the latter. So did Daphne, dubiously. Then she 
looked out at the summer night. Something in the 
night tugged at her heart, something that seemed 
suddenly far more important than slippers, even 
worldly, satin slippers, jet and steel beaded. 

“Oh, let's walk,” she said, “especially if it is a 
fairy night.” 

So the waiting cabby was dismissed and Peter 
and Daphne proceeded afoot. 

The air was full of vague, delicious perfumes, 
coming from many gardens. A faint breeze barely 
stirred the leaves which cast fantastic and lovely 
arabesques upon the sidewalk beneath their feet. 
There was a young moon which gave a mysterious, 
haunting grace and silverness to everything, soften¬ 
ing and blurring the daytime garishness of form 
and color. 

By common consent, they tacitly avoided the 



206 PETER S BEST SELLER 


bright lights of Market Street and pursued the 
darker, quieter side streets, dawdling on their way, 
as if it were a matter of supreme unimportance 
whether or not they ever reached the end of the 
journey. Now and then they met other sauntering 
couples, some of them hand in hand, or clinging 
close to each other’s arms as if the witchery of the 
night had brought them together involuntarily, 
though happily. Once they surprised a boy and a 
girl kissing each other in the shadow of a great 
overhanging willow. Daphne looked away quickly 
and felt her cheeks go warm. She was grateful to 
Peter for appearing not to notice. 

Presently they left the village and mounted the 
roadside up the Hill to the Inn. Halfway up, 
Peter paused and putting out his hand, drew 
Daphne also to a halt. 

“Look,” he said. 

Daphne looked. The sheer beauty of the scene 
which lay before their vision smote her with en¬ 
chantment. In the near distance lay the village, 
its lights twinkling friendlily out of the dusk. 
Farther in the background rose the ranges of low 
hills, purple black against the sky. On either side 
of them stretched meadows, moon silvered) and 
fragrant with new mown grass. In the valley 
beyond, where the river ran invisible through the 
willows, a film of mist floated wraith-like against 
the darkness of the horizon. 

Daphne felt Peter’s hand close over hers, felt him 



A RAINBOW 


207 


draw her a little nearer to him. For once she had 
no rebuke. The spell of the night was strong upon 
her. Her heart gave a queer, unexpected leap. She 
seemed all at once to be hearing far off music like 
the sound of silver trumpets and saw a light as if 
a star had suddenly crossed her path. She was 
afraid, all at once, afraid of what she scarcely 
knew, yet fear it was, a fear, strange, beautiful, 
exultant, a fear she loved, even as she trembled as 
it took possession of her. 

It was only for the space of a breath. Then there 
was only the light of the moon—the same moon 
by which they had come all the way from the 
parsonage. The silver trumpeting ceased as sud¬ 
denly as it had begun though she could hear the 
sound of jazz from the Inn which was just around 
the bend of the road. Coming to herself she pulled 
away from Peter. 

“Come,” she said a little breathlessly. “Hurry, 
Peter. I hear the music, don't you?” 

“Yes,” said Peter Loomis, “I hear it—the music 
of the spheres. And so do you. Wait, Daphne.” 

But Daphne would not wait. Swiftly she forged 
ahead. She was still afraid. She wanted to get 
where there were people. She wanted to get away 
from Peter. Perhaps she wanted to get away from 
herself and her quick-beating heart, too. 

Peter made no more attempt to delay her and 
for the rest of the brief journey he had nothing to 



208 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


say nor did he once leave a space of less than a 
yard between himself and the girl. 

At the Inn, Sue came quickly to greet them. 
Marian followed somewhat less eagerly. Marian 
was beautiful beyond words, Daphne thought, in 
her low-cut black lace evening gown which made 
her bare shoulders look dazzlingly white and accentu¬ 
ated the cameo perfection of her features, the mar¬ 
velous blondness of her hair. For a second, Daphne 
could not help thinking regretfully of the gorgeous, 
discarded, unbecomingly becoming, turquoise bro¬ 
cade. The quaint little ruffled net seemed suddenly 
school-girlish and exaggeratedly ingenue in her 
eyes. She stole a glance at Peter shaking hands 
with Marian at the moment. How could he help 
loving anybody so lovely as Miss Somers, she won¬ 
dered? But even as she scanned the two, she knew 
that whatever had been true once, on this particular 
June evening it was not with a lover’s eyes that Peter 
looked at the other woman. And she knew this by 
comparing his look with the one he had given 
herself when she came out on the parsonage porch 
a little while ago. 

And then Angela fluttered up, plump and pretty 
in the canary taffeta upon which she had finally 
settled. And Angela was followed by Jimmy, a 
little grim and martyred looking. Even now it was 
evident that he considered it a personal affront that 
Daphne should be here with Peter Loomis. The 
hand he gave her, perforce, was hot and fevered. 



A RAINBOW 


209 


His eyes were sullen. Standing between Angela 
and Daphne, he had no doubt in his mind as to 
which girl he wanted. He had thought Angela 
rather alluring when they left the house but beside 
Daphne Angela looked dumpy, commonplace, fussy 
and over-dressed he thought rather ungraciously. 
And, ah, how he hated Peter Loomis with the hot, 
undying—for the moment—hate of foiled youth! 

The music began. Daphne and Peter fell into 
step and were off down the polished floor. Jimmy 
set his teeth and turned to the waiting Angela who 
looked all but on the verge of pouting, unless he 
remembered her existence immediately. They, too, 
joined the dancers. Marian stood a moment gazing 
after Daphne and Peter with a rather curious ex¬ 
pression on her cold, lovely face. A partner 
claimed her and Sue was left for the moment alone 
with the fulfillment of her impulse. The dramatis 
personae were all assembled before her, en masse, 
each betraying himself or herself more or less clearly 
to the shrewd onlooker. Angela wanted Jimmy, 
Jimmy wanted Daphne. Marian wanted Peter 
emotionally, if not intellectually. Daphne Joyce— 
well if she had not actually arrived at the point of 
consciously wanting Peter—she was at any rate very 
happy in his presence. And Peter—but here Sue 
was brought to pause as usual. For who knew 
what Peter wanted? Did Peter himself know? 

Peter was a perfect dancer in a calm, indolent 
way which never lost grace of motion in mere speed 



210 PETER S BEST SELLER 


or intricacy. His step and Daphne’s suited ex¬ 
cellently, as well, indeed, as if they had been made 
to match. In his arms, Daphne felt almost intol¬ 
erably happy as they floated to the strains of that 
chaotic, compelling, mysterious thing called jazz, 
which beat in her heart and her feet like tiny electric 
hammers. 

But happiness, as wise folks know, is a winged 
thing. Like all free, winged things it comes and 
goes at will and none may call it at command or 
bid it stay. Drifting up from no one knows where, 
it comes—is there—a magic presence, the whirr of 
its wings making the air lyrical around you, radiat¬ 
ing rainbow hues like a dew drop that mirrors in 
its tiny self the great sun. 

And then just as suddenly perhaps, it goes—takes 
flight, whither you know not. If it will ever come 
again, you may not guess. You only know that it 
is gone and the world is turned gray and very, very 
still with its passing—like something about to die. 

Something like this it was that befell Daphne 
Joyce. Little enough she guessed when she fol¬ 
lowed Marian Somers up to her room a little later, 
having volunteered to repair a rent some careless 

S' 

dancer had trodden in the black lace gown, that her 
happiness was about to take to its gossamer wings 
and vanish. But so it was. 

“You see,” she heard Marian Somers’ low, cool, 
cultivated voice saying, as her needle plied swiftly, 
to and fro amid the torn lace, “I had a feeling some 




A RAINBOW 


211 


one ought to tell you about Peter—how he is always 
fancying himself in love with this girl and that girl, 
and finding out later that—he isn’t. He doesn’t 
mean any harm. It is just his way. He is forever 
seeking the impossible person that will come up to 
his impossible specifications for a wife. Of course, 
he never finds her. I rather think he doesn’t want 
to. He gets his satisfaction out of the quest. But 
he always pretends for the sake of the game, that 
the last one is She with a capital letter, until he 
gets tired and knows she isn’t. I know what I am 
talking about, Miss Joyce. I—I have seen it hap¬ 
pen. It is not nearly so amusing for the girl as it 
is for Peter. I wouldn’t advise any girl to get to 
caring for Peter. It is too—precarious. Peter is 
too precarious. Oh, thank you so much. You have 
mended it wonderfully. Nobody would ever guess 
it had been torn. Oh, I am afraid stooping over 
has made you faint. You look pale. Do you want 
some rouge?” 

“No, thank you,” said Daphne steadily. “I am 
quite all right. I suppose I should thank you for 
what you have just been saying. No doubt you 
meant it kindly but it wasn’t really necessary to 
warn me. I think I understand Peter’s precarious¬ 
ness quite well. So far I have managed to refuse 
him every time he has asked me to marry him and 
I imagine I shall have the fortitude to continue.” 

The retort went home. A faint and very unusual 
color surged up into Miss Somers’ cheeks. So 



212 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


Peter had proposed to the girl and she had refused 
him. She, herself, had never refused Peter. He 
had never asked her to marry him, never would 
ask, Marian was quite sure. 

Seeing the flush and guessing the reason, with the 
uncanny intuition that women sometimes have of 
each other's secrets, Daphne took no joy in her 
little revenge. It could not help her own hurt to hurt 
the other nor assuage the sting of her own wounded 
pride to stick needles into the proud Miss Somers. 
After all she had really meant to be kind. Daphne 
felt that. And it was true—every word of it. 
Peter was precarious. Who should know that 
better than Daphne? Hadn’t she been fully warned 
all along by her own instinct and by Peter's own 
words? Had he not told her that, having fallen in 
love, he invariably fell out again and as soon as one 
experience was definitely over, he was ready for a 
new one. Peter wasn’t a finisher. He was an ac¬ 
complished artist in Beginnings. A girl was a fool, 
just as Miss Somers had implied, to let herself fall 
in love with him, knowing what he was like. And 
she—Daphne Joyce, who believed so strongly in 
the Great Adventure that it was almost a religion 
with her, had fallen in love with a man like this—a 
philanderer, who would go a’seeking elsewhere next 
year, next month, next week, tomorrow. And what 
was worse to her hot young pride, she must have 
shown she cared, for this other girl had understood 
and taken it upon herself to warn her out of the 




A RAINBOW 


213 


depths of her own experience with Peter. If only 
Peter didn’t guess! He mustn’t—not ever, ever, 
ever. 

Why she hadn't even known it herself until Miss 
Somers had shown her the truth! That was why 
she had run away from Peter out there in the 
moonlight. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. 
It was love she had been afraid of. It had been 
love she had run away from. No wonder. Love 
was a hateful thing. It hurt and scorched. She 
would cast it aside. She would have none of it. 
And she would not* let love or anything else spoil 
her fairy night. She would dance and dance and 
dance just as she had promised her mother’s slip¬ 
pers. She would dance on love itself—to show how 
little it mattered to her—to show Peter how little 
he mattered to her. 

All this flashed through Daphne’s mind as she 
descended the stairs to the ballroom just behind 
Marian Somers. The violins were playing crazily. 
The room was an intoxicating swirl of color and 
light. There was fragrance—beauty—music—life 
all around her. Daphne thrilled to the challenge. 
Not Peter—not Marian Somers—not her own love, 
crazier than the violins, should take away the joy 
of the moment for her. She would be happy— 
happy at any cost. 

Even now Peter was bearing down on her 
evidently bent on securing another dance. Just 
ahead of him was a young collegian, dapper, rosy- 



214 PETER S BEST SELLER 


cheeked, clean shaven—ridiculously young, Daphne 
thought, though he was at least a year her own 
senior. Daphne smiled straight into the eyes of 
the ridiculously young man, rather a dangerous and 
dazzling little smile with a half promise and a half 
challenge in it. The young man quickened his 
steps. The smile had got in its deadly work, pain¬ 
lessly but surely. The youth was lost. So were 
Peter’s chances of a dance. By the time he reached 
the spot, Daphne was there no longer. Only 
Marian turned to greet him with the slow, enig¬ 
matic smile of her own which might have meant 
any one of several things had Peter been interested 
in endeavoring to get at the heart of it. 

From that moment, Daphne Joyce was the belle 
of the evening. Who knows what it is that makes 
one girl a social success at a ball with more partners 
than she can satisfy even splitting and splitting her 
dances to the lowest fractional forms while another 
no less pretty, no less becomingly gowned, no less 
witty or charming or expert a dancer, is all but a 
failure? Nobody, of course, can say. It is fate 
or chance or something else—something elusive— 
something no one can lay sure finger upon and say 
“Lo, this/' or “Lo, that.” But it is there and can’t 
be denied. You have it or you haven’t it and that 
is the end of it. And Daphne Joyce had it beyond 
a doubt tonight. The world was hers. 

With characteristic abandon, she flung herself 
into the thrill of the moment and laughed and 



A RAINBOW 


215 


danced and chatted and flirted with one youth after 
another, quite mercilessly. 

And all the time she managed to keep just beyond 
Peter’s reach, though she smiled at him when they 
chanced to meet in the dances, or when she spun 
by him as he stood on the outer circle of the room 
watching her with half-closed eyes. Peter was not 
a person to be content with cut-ins and when he 
discovered that he was to be allowed fractions or 
nothing, and apparently the latter from preference, 
he ceased to enter the running. Indeed he ceased 
to dance at all except occasionally with Sue. He 
just drifted into a corner by the window and looked 
on at the gayety about him. It was there that 
Marian found him a little later and asked if he 
would take her outside to cool off. 

“There is no use pretending we want to dance 
every minute like those goslings in there,’’ Marian 
had said with a smile as they stepped through the 
French window on the porch. “We don’t and there 
is an end of it. We are not so young as we were. 
Besides, I want to talk to you. I have something 
rather special to say.” 



CHAPTER XI 


IN WHICH PETER IS TAKEN POSSESSION OF 

“Peter,” remarked Miss Somers, “it looks to me 
as if you had been behaving abominably. You may 
as well light a cigarette and make yourself as com¬ 
fortable as possible, but you are in for a lecture.” 

Peter followed the suggestion as to the cigarette 
and then surveying his companion with lazily cu¬ 
rious eyes bade her proceed. 

Marian proceeded. She had, it seemed, been 
talking at some length with Mr. Jimmy Danvers. 
She liked Mr. Danvers who was really an exceed¬ 
ingly nice boy, much nicer than you would have 
suspected, having met his mother. She was, more¬ 
over, exceedingly sorry for him and inclined to 
agree with him that Peter Loomis had wronged him 
most unpardonably, in cutting him out with the 
very pretty and charming Miss Joyce. 

“You know perfectly well, Peter,” she accused, 
“that if you hadn’t come along, Daphne would have 
continued to be more or less engaged to Jimmy 
Danvers and, probably by this time next year, would 
have been comfortably married to him.” 

Peter admitted the possibility and added that, 
saving her presence, it was a damn lucky thing he 

had come just as he had, to avert such a catastrophe. 

216 


PETER IS TAKEN 


217 


“Who are you to decide what is a catastrophe 
and what isn’t, and to pretend to play providence to 
amuse yourself? I tell you, Jimmy Danvers is an 
awfully nice boy and, thanks to you, he is likely to 
marry that little feather-headed Angela when he 
might have had a gem of a girl like your Daphne. 
As far as that goes, what business have you to spoil 
a good match for Daphne, herself? There aren’t 
so many eligible young men in a town like this 
that she can afford to throw away a Jimmy Danvers 
like an old glove, because you make love to her for 
a few days and get her mind set on something that 
can’t possibly mean happiness. You don’t for a 
minute fancy you are going to marry her yourself, 
do you?” 

Peter admitted serenely that he had fancied it 
quite a number of times, and nearly always found 
the notion quite agreeable. 

Marian made an impatient gesture. 

“You and your fancies! You ought to be 
ashamed, Peter Loomis. I wish you would write 
a book about yourself—the kind of man that is 
forever buzzing around like a bee, wherever there 
is honey and then, when the honey is gone or the 
notion seizes him, off he goes to another garden. 
It would make an interesting psychological study 
and I know of nobody better fitted than yourself 
to do it.” 

Peter suddenly sat up very straight, holding his 
glowing cigarette suspended in mid-air. 



218 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“By Jove! You have hit it, Marian. It is what 
I have been looking for—a plot. I am tremendously 
indebted to you. I’ll send you the first copy, hot off 
the press, autographed.” 

He leaned back again in his chair, then slipped 
into a kind of queer, collapsed hump and ran his 
fingers through his hair. 

“Peter! Do you mean that?” 

“Sure, I do. It is great stuff I tell you—the 
thing is beginning to churn now in my head. I can 
see-” 

“You are the craziest person, Peter! I suppose 
you will make copy of us all—me—Daphne—the 
others?” 

Peter stared at her a moment meditatively, then 
chuckled. 

“Sure,” he said again. “The miller gets his grist 
as he can. Life is all copy if you can only see it 
that way.” 

“Possibly. But a good many people—especially 
women—never learn to see it that way. We aren’t 
as detached as men. I think you had better finish 
your haying and go away from Danversville very 
soon, Peter.” 

“You mean on Daphne’s account?” challenged 
Peter directly. 

“I do,” returned Marian Somers as directly. 

“And you don’t think it would do for me to 
marry her?” pursued Peter, throwing away the re¬ 
mains of his cigarette, which flashed for a moment, 





PETER IS TAKEN 


219 


a vivid flame among the paler lights of the fireflies, 
then vanished in darkness. 

“I do not,’’ said Marian decisively. 

“And why not?” pressed Peter. 

Even as he asked the question, Daphne Joyce, 
with the prince of the moment beside her, passed 
down the steps, only a few feet from the shadowy 
corner where Peter and Marian sat. Daphne’s 
laugh drifted back to them from over the rose 
hedges which hid her and her companion from view* 

“That is one answer/’ said Marian. “I don’t 
believe she is a day over twenty. She doesn’t look 
it if she is and you are nearly forty. Think of it, 
Peter. Twice as old. She might almost be your 
daughter.” 

Peter winced. He didn’t like the sound of 
Marian’s argument. It was a little too close to the 
course his own thought had been travelling that 
evening while he watched Daphne and her princes 
and felt himself deliberately relegated to the outer 
circles. 

But Marian was not through with him yet. She 
was in deadly earnest, protecting not only Peter, 
but Daphne, too, from what she believed threatened 
disaster. 

“Could she make you happy—a mere slip of a 
girl like that who has scarcely known any life out¬ 
side the limits of this very limited little town? 
Could you make her happy?” 

“God knows,” said Peter soberly. 



220 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Marian turned quickly at that and looked sharply 
into his face. 

“Peter, forgive me if I am hurting you. Is it 
really real with you this time?” 

“God knows,” said Peter again. “I don’t. I 
wish I did.” 

Marian was silent a moment considering this. 
The silence gave Peter’s mind a chance to stray. 
It slipped back to the plot which Marian had inad¬ 
vertently given him a little before. It was, as he 
had told her, already “churning.” It was an old 
sensation—one he recognized and welcomed. It 
was thus his plots always came to him, not through 
observation or effort but out of space, like a spark 
struck from stone by the hoof of some phantom 
steed ridden by an invisible horseman. He had a 
curious feeling of having people thronging around 
him, not Marian by his side', not the whirling 
dancers just inside the door, not Daphne and her 
enamored swain somewhere down there in the 
moonlit garden, but book people, men and women 
whom he and he alone had power to call to life. He 
had had the feeling before though never so strongly 
or so insistently as now. 

Marian’s voice arrested him, stirred him from a 
mood which had something almost hypnotic about it. 

“Don’t do it, Peter,” she was saying. “Go away 
before it is too late. Don’t let that lovely child get 
to dreaming impossible dreams. You know you 
don’t want to tie yourself down. You are married 



PETER IS TAKEN 


221 


to your own freedom. You are a traveller tempera¬ 
mentally, emotionally as well as literally. I don’t 
believe you could be true to one place or one girl. 
Faithfulness isn’t in you.” 

Peter, quite out of his trance by now, gave 
Marian his undivided and rapt attention. 

She smiled her cool, ironic little smile. 

* 

“Oh, you can stare at me. I suppose you think 
I am talking like this because I am jealous. Maybe 
it is partly that. Motives are such complex things 
it is hard to straighten them out even when one 
honestly desires to be honest. But it isn’t chiefly 
jealousy. It is friendship. I like you and I don’t 
want to think you are utterly selfish. And I like 
Daphne. There is something about her that hurts 
me when I think about her getting hurt. And she 
will be, Peter, if you don’t go away at once. I am 
a woman. I can see that. Maybe she will be hurt 
any way. Probably she will but she will get over 
it, whereas if it went deeper and lasted longer, she 
wouldn’t—couldn’t. It didn’t matter much about me 
because I am not the kind to get hurt very much, or 
even perhaps to love very much. I am cold. I 
can’t let myself go even if I wanted to. And, of 
course, you and Sue and the rest were quite right 
in thinking a marriage between us would have been 
impossible. I knew that better than the rest of you 
all along, saw it much more clearly than you saw 
it at first. And now I wouldn’t lift my finger to 
win you if I could. That is quite dead I think. 



222 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


But Daphne is different. She is quite capable oj[ 
loving deeply and getting terribly hurt. If you are 
the Peter I think you are, you won’t let it go so far 
as that—far enough to hurt Daphne seriously. You 
will go away.” Marian rose and stood looking 
down at Peter, a little ghost of a smile playing in 
her eyes, a smile that for once was not in the least 
ironic, was rather a little tender, almost maternal. 
“That is what I felt I had to say, Peter. Are we 
still friends?” 

Peter, too, rose and took both her hands in his. 

“Never more so than now,” he said earnestly. 
“Thank you, Marian. There is a whole lot more 
to you than I knew, more fool I, and Pve missed 
more than I knew, too, perhaps. I admit there is a 
whole lot of truth in what you have said—enough 
to sting a bit, in fact. But you have not said any¬ 
thing that I haven’t known all along—nothing I 
haven’t been facing myself, tonight—for several 
nights indeed. But it is rather salutary to hear it 
from somebody else. Please believe I don’t want 
to hurt Daphne or—or anybody.” 

“I know, Peter. I understand. You haven’t done 
me any harm. Don’t worry. You have done me 
good rather. I used to be afraid I hadn’t any heart. 
I have been rather glad to be made to realize that I 
had one—of a sort. And Peter, dear, please believe 
too that if you do find it is the real thing after all 
—I should be very, very glad.” 

And then before he realized she was going, she 







“just at that moment daphne and her prince came 

INTO VIEW AGAIN” 








PETER IS TAKEN 


223 


had withdrawn her hands from his and vanished 
into the ballroom and he was alone in the shadowy 
corner with a multitude of conflicting* emotions 
pressing for mastery within him. 

He seemed to be two entirely distinct persons one 
of whom could hardly wait to get away somewhere 
by himself with paper and pencil and begin to get 
into tangible shape the plot which was rapidly form¬ 
ing in his mind, while the other had to settle the 
fact once for all and without delay whether this 
sweeping passion for Daphne Joyce was or was not 
as Marian put it “the real thing.” 

He stared out into the night. Through the dusk 
the fireflies sent their pale little lanterns. The moon 
had gone behind a cloud but through the space be¬ 
tween the branches of the great elm just outside 
the porch a single, steadfast, luminous star shone 
out. Firefly or star? Which was this latest love 
of his? If a firefly, Marian was right. He must go 
at once. He had already stayed too long. But if a 
star- Peter drew a long breath. 

And just at that moment Daphne and her prince 
came into view again, strolled up the steps and past 
Peter with eyes which saw only each other and ears 
which apparently heard only their own low-voiced 
exchange of words. Youth must be served. Old 
enough to be her father—almost. No, it wasn’t 
as bad as that. Thirty-eight—twenty-two. Sixteen 
years! Peter Loomis set his teeth and marched 
into the ballroom after the two. 




224 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Inside he saw Daphne and her partner had already 
joined the dancers. He turned and went back into 
the night. 

But when it came time for the last dance, he sought 
Daphne out as she stood talking with Sue, her face 
daintily alight with excitement, her eyes shining, 
her foot, encased in the worldly little slipper, still 
beating the rhythm of remembered music. 

“Isn’t this dance mine, Daphne Joyce?” he asked. 

“Of course if you want it, Peter,” said Daphne. 
“I have been having a wonderful time, have you?” 

“Well, yes, in a way,” drawled Peter. “But per¬ 
haps not quite in the same way as yours. Mrs. 
Blakesley is going to send us home in the car. It 
isn’t fit for a princess to travel afoot twice in one 
evening especially a princess who must have danced 
her feet half off.” 

Daphne turned with a smile to thank Mrs. 
Blakesley. 

“It is such a beautiful evening why don’t you and 
Miss Somers come, too?” she suggested. “Ah, do!” 
There was a real plea in the girl’s eyes. Sue saw 
that the invitation wasn’t mere politeness, that for 
some reason Peter's golden girl did not desire to be 
alone with him this beautiful evening, even as she 
had apparently not desired to give him over many 
of her dances. Was she on guard? Sue was frankly 
a little puzzled by the situation. She had a feeling 
that there were currents vibrating which were beyond 
her power of understanding—perhaps beyond Peter’s 




PETER IS TAKEN 


225 


and Daphne’s own. Certainly Daphne Joyce in her 
glorious youngness tonight seemed rather for youth 
than for Peter. And yet there had been something 
glowing in her eyes when she and Peter had come in 
from the moonlight at the beginning of the evening 
—something which her later conduct had belied. 
And Peter himself for all his quietness seemed a 
bit tense, not quite his usual, bland lackadaisical self. 
Marian had said to her during the evening that 
there was danger of Daphne’s being hurt. Just for 
a second, Sue had a feeling that it was Peter, not 
the girl, who was in danger of suffering,—suffering 
as youth, perhaps, had no power to suffer. 

As to escorting Daphne Joyce to the parsonage 
and breaking up Peter’s chance of a presumably 
more than agreeable tete-a-tete, Sue wasn’t quite 
certain as to what she ought to do about that. But 
she was very much a woman and quick to respond 
to the challenge of another woman’s unspoken plea. 
If Daphne wanted her tonight, as apparently she 
did, Daphne should have her whether Peter liked it 
or not. 

“Why, yes,” she agreed after a second’s hesitation. 
“I think that would be a delightful way of cooling 
off before we go to bed. And as you say, it is a 
heavenly evening and I never can resist moonlight 
in the country. I am sure I shall wake up in my 
grave on moonlight nights, long after I am dead, 
and wander through the meadows and dance in the 
pine woods.” 



226 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


“Oh, do you feel like that too?” said Daphne. 
“I didn’t know anybody else loved it just that special 
way.” ' 

The violins began to play and Peter drew Daphne 
into his arms. If Sue had sensed something a little 
different in Peter, something a little excited as well 
as tense, Daphne felt it even more strongly. She 
must look out. Peter mustn’t know. “Mustn’t 
know—mustn’t know.” The words chanted them¬ 
selves, mingling strangely with the violin. An in¬ 
expert pair of dancers collided with them. Drawing 
her a little closer, Peter steered Daphne dexterously 
out of the crowd. Inadvertently Daphne looked up 
though she had not meant to and meeting her part¬ 
ner’s eyes she suddenly heard a new song lilting on 
the strings of the violins, singing all through her 
own being. The song ran thus. “Peter loves me. 
Peter loves me.” No, that wasn’t light at all. She 
mustn’t listen to that song. She must shut her ears 
to it, stop it from singing in her heart. She must 
remember that Peter was precarious. “Precarious!” 
mocked the violins. “Precarious!” echoed Daphne’s 
mind. “Precarious!” Love was precarious. She 
would none of it. Had Peter looked at Marian like 
that before he—got tired? 

Peter was bending over her solicitously. Oddly 
enough he echoed the last word in her thoughts. 

“Tired, Daphne Joyce?” he asked. 

She shook her head. 



PETER IS TAKEN 


227 


“No, but I think—you will be by tomorrow. Let’s 
go home. I don’t want to dance any more.” 

Making no protest though he might fairly enough 
have urged that he was entitled to this one last dance, 
at least, in its entirety, Peter led her out of the crowd 
to where Sue and Marian stood. 

“I am not so moon mad as Sue is,” Marian mur¬ 
mured, “so I am going to beg to be excused from 
escorting you home. Just now sleep looks better 
to me than moonlight so I’ll say good night. Some 
day I hope we shall meet again, Miss Joyce, and that 
I shall hear you sing. I never had the luck to hear 
your father though I remember hearing other people 
say he had a golden voice. Good night, Peter. Don’t 
forget you are lunching with us tomorrow before we 
go back to town. Or perhaps you will change your 
mind and come with us?” and Marian smiled into 
Peter’s eyes—a smile that seemed to Daphne to con¬ 
vey a message though what its burden was she could 
not guess. 

Sue had an impulse to ask to be excused, too, since 
Marian failed her but she couldn’t forget that 
Daphne’s eyes had said, “Please,.come,” and so she 
kept her promise. After all Peter could have his 
moment later if he wanted it. Peter was a person 
entirely capable of making his own moments. 

“Old Peter must have wished you were in 
Hades,” Gideon commented later when Sue related 
this part of the evening’s happenings. “On a night 
like that! Ye gods !” 



228 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


“No doubt he did,” Sue had twinkled. “I didn’t 
go to please him. I went because Daphne wanted me. 
Peter was queer anyway. He hardly said a word 
the whole way, acted as if he were temporarily in¬ 
habiting the moon or possibly it was Venus he was 
visiting. In any case he wasn’t with us except 
corporeally. I don’t know where he was. But I 
know that Daphne Joyce was precisely where she 
manoeuvered to be. She was a slice of bread and 
Peter was the other slice of bread and I was the 
ham, so to speak. You get me, I trust?’’ 

“I get you,” grinned Gideon. “And it looks as 
if Peter didn't get the girl, eh?” 

“Not yet,” said Sue wisely. “This is a wait and 
see game. But unless I am awfully off my guess, I 
was requisitioned for the ham-gooseberry role not 
because she doesn’t like Peter but because she does.” 

However that might be, Peter got only a quick 
little pressure of a strangely cold, small hand and a 
hurried “good night and thank you for a wonderful 
evening” in the hall of the parsonage and was left 
at the foot of the stairs while the princess and her 
ruffles and her worldly little slippers that had danced 
and danced and danced, disappeared into the dark¬ 
ness of the upper story. 

Peter went out of doors again and sitting down on 
the porch smoked in rapid succession a trio of 
cigarettes. This rite completed, he went quietly 
up the stairs to his own room. There arrived, he 
stripped off his coat, shoved everything that was on 




PETER IS TAKEN 


229 


the table onto the bed, seized a pad of paper and a 
pencil and began to scribble as if all the demons of 
the nether regions were unchained and in pursuit 
of him. He was obsessed—possessed. The story 
that had come to him with such startling suddenness 
out of the firefly haunted night while Daphne roamed 
the garden with her enamored prince and Marian 
Somers sat beside him and delivered unpalatable if 
wholesome truths, took on form and substance. 

It seemed as if some power outside of himself 
and stronger than himself had taken hold of him, 
made him an instrument of expression for its own 
creative will. 

It was an amazing and exhilarating experience 
comparable, Peter thought later, when he was able 
to think back at all and analyze what had happened to 
him, to riding on a magnificent storm cloud or skiing 
on a meteor amidst the great rushing of mighty 
winds—or was it wings ? Plot, character, theme, bits 
of conversation, extraordinarily detailed scenes, came 
to him, not by tedious seeking, but even as the 
invincible tide hurls driftage upon the shore, borne 
on the crests of exultant waves. 

All night he worked, never pausing, never rising 
from his chair, never even stopping to light a 
cigarette or to wipe his brow, though the perspira¬ 
tion streamed down his cheeks. 

And when dawn came, bringing pale rose streaks 
of cloud and a little wind, languid as spent passion, 
the bare outline of what was later to be known as 




230 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Peter Loomis’ most remarkable book—his master¬ 
piece some said—was down on paper, unforgettable 
—already a living thing, a creation of mighty forces. 
And for the first time since Peter had begun to 
write he was putting himself, his own complex, many 
sided, erratic soul into the book he was building, 
giving to it more than a little of his own life. 

No wonder by the time the robins began to'sing 
Peter Loomis was utterly weary, soul and body. 
He flung himself upon the bed beside the litter of 
books and magazines he had himself swept there in 
his imperious clearing of the table, and slept a sleep 
that would have been the admiration of the seven 
sleepers could they have beheld it. 

But at six-thirty he was up and down at the little 
river for his customary morning dip. And at seven- 
thirty, having consumed one of Aunt Lucinda’s 
palate-satisfying breakfasts he returned to the hay- 
field, quite as if he had not, after a fashion, written 
a book over night. 

It was in a thoroughly leisurely fashion that Peter 
made hay that morning, not because he was especially 
tired, for oddly enough he wasn’t tired at all now 
that he was out in the fresh morning air, but be¬ 
cause one load alone would finish the haying and 
Peter was in no haste to get the task over with. He 
had been spending very happy hours in the fragrant 
meadow and being loath to leave it forever, he 
dawdled over the work much as one lingers over a 
delicious beverage, sipping it by degrees, lest one 




PETER IS TAKEN 


231 


come too soon to the bottom of the glass. Besides 
there were things to think of—things he could de¬ 
cide, in so far as the decision lay in his own hands, 
far better out-of-doors with the hills and the bobo¬ 
links and the scented breeze and the sorrel colt to 
give him counsel than he could ever settle them 
under a man-made roof. Peter’s problem wasn’t a 
within-four-walls problem. It was as big as the 
world, as limitless as the blue ether over his head. 

It was only a little after eleven when Daphne, 
playing unhungrily with a belated breakfast, looked 
up and saw Peter, in his haying costume, hat in 
hand, standing in the doorway. 

“Bless us, what a lazy princess!” he drawled. 
“Here I have garnered the last wisp of hay while 
you slept.” 

“Peter! Really is it all done?” Daphne tried 
not to sound sorry, not to let Peter suspect it made 
her feel sadly lonely all of a sudden to think that 
by tomorrow there would be no Peter coming in 
from the hayfield—no Peter at all in Danversville 
perhaps. There was no earthly reason why he 
shouldn’t accept Miss Somers’ suggestion and motor 
back to town with his friends. No reason at all. 
And no reason at all why Daphne Joyce should not 
bid him Godspeed on his journey. The Beginning 
had come to an End. 

“The last wisp, I repeat. The congregation will 
please all rise and sing Harvest Home, omitting the 
second stanza. Aren’t you going to invite me to 



232 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


sit down and share your repast ? There weren’t any 
raspberries at the first table.” 

Daphne smiled and invited him to be seated. 
Whereupon she served him a heaping saucer full of 
luscious red ripe berries, pushed the cream and the 
cold muffins in his direction and inquired whether 
he would have coffee. 

^ m 

Peter would. In fact he would have everything 
there was going this being by way of a celebration. 

Daphne was thankful as she poured the coffee that 
he was so natural and casual and easy going this 
morning. There was not a trace of the rather 
strange, lover Peter of the night before. It was 
much easier so. She was glad. Yet way down in 
her heart there was something which was not so 
glad—something suspiciously like an ache though 
Daphne denied its existence as sternly as any Chris¬ 
tian Scientist ever denied a twinge of toothache. 
She mustn’t miss the lover Peter, with eyes that said 
so much. She must be grateful he was making the 
End easy for both of them by being the whimsical 
harlequin. Ah, but it was the whimsical harlequin 
she had fallen in love with, more fool she! 

‘T beg leave to inform you,” began Peter having 
drained his cup, “that you have an outstanding obli¬ 
gation to discharge. You promised me that when 
the haying was done you would take me canoeing 
down the river, supper included. When do we 
start?” 

“Why don’t you go back to town with Mrs. Blakes- 



PETER IS TAKEN 


238 


ley and Miss Somers?” counterquestioned Daphne. 
“It would be much pleasanter than going by train. 
I am sure Miss Somers expects you.” 

“Are you?” mused Peter. “I wonder. No, my 
dear Daphne, I fear your intuition is, for once, in 
error. I am fairly positive that Miss Somers does 
not expect me. And in any case I don’t expect 
myself. I have no mind to be cheated out of my 
just dues. I shall not stir from Danversville until 
you have fulfilled your pledge and taken me canoeing. 
I repeat—when do we start?” 

“I fear we cannot start today if that is what you 
are planning on. Today is Friday.” 

“Of course, it is Friday. Do not all the most 
beatific events of my life occur on Friday? How¬ 
ever, I don’t forget that it was on a most memorable 
Tuesday that a dryad came out of the woods and 
set me free from the cabbage enchantment which 
held me in duress vile. But as for Friday—I have 
no prejudices against it whatever, rather to the 
contrary. And you?” 

“Friday is prayer meeting.” 

“Even so. What’s Hecuba to me? I don’t go to 
prayer meeting.” 

“But I do. And I am going to sing a solo and 
I ought to practise this afternoon, so really, Peter, 
I don’t see the slightest chance of your getting in 
your canoeing trip, especially with supper included. 
I’m sorry.” 

“Why should we be so easily daunted by such 




V 


234 PETER’S BEST SELLER 

minor obstacles ? You could practise on the river 
and if necessary—absolutely necessary—we could 
get home in season for prayer meeting, couldn’t we ?’* 

“We could perhaps, but would we?” demurred 
Daphne. 

She was all for the better part of valor this morn¬ 
ing and just because she knew so very well that there 
was a tug in her heart in favor of the river and Peter, 
she clung valiantly to prayer meeting as a lifeline. 

“If we didn’t come back in season, ruin and 
desperation would be upon us—also Aunt Lucinda’s 
wrath, which is quite some wrath as I know better 
than you. Altogether, Peter, I think it is too risky. 
Canoeing and prayer meeting are totally incompatible 
I fear.” 

“But risky things are always the most interesting,” 
argued Peter. “Besides when you consider that 
it is now or never, that tomorrow I am going 
away-” 

Tomorrow! It had never occurred to Daphne 
before what a chilly word tomorrow is. Just to 
hear it sent a queer shiver through her, warm 
though the June morning was. Tomorrow Peter 
was going away. It would be her last chance to 
live for a few hours in the magic house in which 
she had been living since that Tuesday in the woods. 
After all what did it matter? By tomorrow night 
everything would be done with anyway. It was 
risky in more than one sense, but as Peter said, 




PETER IS TAKEN 


235 


risky things were almost always the most interesting. 
Had not Daphne herself always known that? 

She raised her eyes to Peter who had gotten to 
his feet and stood looking down at her, a rather 
odd little smile in his eyes. 

“Is it yes, Daphne Joyce?” he asked. 

“Oh, yes, it is yes. You always have your own 
way, don’t you, Peter? There is no use trying to 
prevent it.” 

“I wish I were sure that that always held good,” 
murmured Peter with unusual gravity. “Thank 
you, Daphne Joyce. Are you giving in to please me 
or because it pleases you a little bit, too, to have 
one more magic afternoon and a small slice of a 
magic evening?” 

Daphne’s eyes dropped. Peter! Peter! Why 
did you use that word magic? It frightened her, 
made her feel as if he were reading her very thoughts 
with those sleepy, inscrutable eyes of his. She 
roused herself with a sharp effort of will. She 
remembered how the violins had sung. “Peter 
mustn’t know. Peter mustn’t know.” It was true. 
Nothing else mattered but that. Peter mustn’t 
know. 

Bravely she smiled up at him. 

“Of course, I am glad, Peter. I love canoeing 
and I haven’t been on the river once since Jimmy— 
well, since Jimmy left me.” The provoking dimple 
suddenly flashed into view. 

“Are you sure Jimmy has—well, left you,” teased 



236 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Peter echoing her words. “There were moments 
last night when it occurred to me that in spite of 
Miss Angela’s beaux yeux you could whistle him 
back if you chose.” 

“I whistle badly,” smiled Daphne. “And permit 
me to remind you that you are lunching at twelve- 
thirty at the Inn and though I admit you are exceed- 
ingly picturesque that way, I don’t believe Miss 
Somers would like to have you escort her into the 
dining room as you are.” 

“Right-O!” shrugged Peter. “I fancy Marian 
and Sue could weather the shock but the waiters 
never. Waiters are ever the true aristocracy. You 
can’t monkey with the conventions and keep their 
respect. I fly. But I return anon, fair damsel, and 
by four o’clock at the latest we shall retreat to the 
river with lunch. Am I right?” 

“Quite right,” agreed Daphne, “provided you 
promise cross your heart and hope to die that you 
will get me back to the house by seven-thirty or a 
quarter of eight at the latest.” 

And Peter promising solemnly, cross his heart 
and hope to die, departed, leaving Daphne to clear 
the table with a little, half rueful smile playing 
round the corners of her mouth. The moods of 
youth have as many facets as a diamond and reflect 
as many hues as a dew drop. In spite of the little 
pain which kept prick, prick, pricking at her heart, 
Daphne was happy, unreasoningly happy, for were 
she and Peter not going to have one more magic 



PETER IS TAKEN 


237 


afternoon and a slice, however small, of a 
magic evening in spite of prayer meeting and 
precariousness ? 

And just then Aunt Lucinda came bustling in to 
announce that as Mr. Loomis was away and Daphne 
had eaten breakfast at such a crazy hour they would 
have a cold snack instead of the regular dinner. 

“Your uncle is writing his sermon and he never 
knows what he is eating when he has that on his 
mind so he won’t care,” she murmured on. “And it 
will give me a sight more time to work on the aprons 
for the Tuxbury babies, bless ’em! Poor little 
mites! I’m going to use the gayest gingham I can 
lay hands on. They don’t have a speck of color in 
their lives. If I had a fortune left me sudden like, 
the first thing I’d do would be to start an asylum 
of my own—a real one—and I'd mother every 
wizened, scared, starved little soul I could gather in 
and get ’em to laughing and playing and chattering 
and acting human which is more than those poor 
kiddies over to the Tuxbury Home are encouraged 
to do, as near as I can make out. Marcia Flint 
is a dreadful good woman but she wasn’t cut out 
for the mothering job, that’s one sure thing. I can’t 
think how she ever took up with being a matron of 
an orphans’ home for a living. She’d make a much 
better brigadier general or an efficiency expert. She 
has about as much understanding of how a child’s 
mind works and what a child’s soul needs, as a 



238 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


person blind from birth would have of the beauties 
of a sunrise.” 

Daphne listened to this outburst, her mind coming 
back rather slowly from its journeyings into the land 
of magic. But long before her aunt had reached the 
last period of her unusually long speech the girl was 
taking in with quick sympthy what* the older woman 
was saying. She paused in her crumbing of the 
table cloth to face Aunt Lucinda thoughtfully. 

“I wonder,” she said, “why people like you who 
have hearts big enough to cuddle the whole world 
don't have any children and the people who aren’t 
fit to be mothers or to have anything to do with 
children either have half a dozen babies or man¬ 
age so-called children’s homes like Miss Flint. Seems 
to me an awful waste if nothing worse.” 

Mrs. Lucinda walked over to the window and 
picked a yellowing leaf from a potted geranium 
before she spoke. 

“Don’t know, my dear,” she said presently, “I 
used to ask questions like that myself once and 
pester the Lord quite a bit about what I was pleased 
to think was his blundering and wasteful methods 
in my case but I stopped some time ago. I’ve lived 
quite a number of years and I’ve seen so many of 
what looked like the Lord’s blunders turn out some¬ 
thing mighty different in the end that I am getting 
to trust Him considerably more than I did when I 
was first married. I sometimes even suspect He 
knows more about His business than I do myself. 



PETER IS TAKEN 


( 


239 


As for me, maybe if He’d seen fit to send me the 
children I was so crazy for, I wouldn’t have devel¬ 
oped the kind of heart to cuddle the rest of the 
world in. Sometimes mothers are so selfishly 
maternal with their own brood that they forget the 
needs of God’s other little folks that have just as 
much need of blooming in sunshine as their own 
precious posies. Besides I haven’t been so bad off. 
I’ve had you from pretty near the beginning. 
You’ve always been most like my own. Don’t for¬ 
get that, my dear, nor what a lot of difference it has 
made to me and to your uncle.” 

Aunt Lucinda turned away from the geraniums 
and looked into her niece’s face for a moment. 
Tears all unexpected welled into Daphne’s eyes. 

“He was saying only last night what a wonderful 
comfort you had always been to us first and last,” 
went on Aunt Lucinda, the barrier of her usual New 
England reticence broken down for a rare moment 
of genuine sentiment. “He was saying, too, that 
you have grown up a lot this summer—just these last 
few days even. There isn’t anything you want to 
tell me is there, Daphne? I had a fancy a few 
minutes ago that there might be.” 

Daphne winked back the tears which she had not 
wanted and shook her head. Not even to Aunt 
Lucinda could she tell how very grown up she was 
this June morning though she would have dearly 
loved to have found the relief of letting tears wash 
away that inner hurt, while she let herself be com- 



240 PETER S BEST SELLER 


forted in those loving arms by the heart that was 
big enough to cuddle all the world. But being grown 
up carried its penalties. She wasn’t a little girl any 
more to pour out all her secrets and little troubles. 
She was a woman with all a woman’s pride. She 
must keep her secret and hide her trouble even from 
this dear almost-mother of hers. 

“Not a thing, dear,’’ she said out loud, her voice 
steady, although a little low. “Except that I am 
going canoeing with Peter this afternoon when he 
comes back from seeing his friends off. We are 
taking supper with us but we will be back in plenty 
of time for prayer meeting so you mustn’t worry. 
Peter is going tomorrow. Did he tell you he had 
finished the haying?” 

“Yes, he told me.” Aunt Lucinda’s tone was a 
little dry. Remembering that disconcerting blush of 
yesterday and being perfectly aware of the tears 
that were so near to the surface in the girl’s brown 
eyes, she thought that so far as she was concerned 
Peter Loomis couldn’t get away a minute too soon. 
She had a suspicion that he had already stayed too 
long. And canoeing on the river was the mischief 
itself. Aunt Lucinda had been young once and had 
also gone boating on the river with attractive young 
men. She knew the risks. Ah, well, as she had 
said to Robert only a few nights ago, they couldn’t 
expect to keep Daphne in a glass case. And maybe 
if the thing had to come, it was better to have it 
young and get over it. Anyway you couldn’t fall 



PETER IS TAKEN 


241 


very dangerously in love with a young man you 
hadn’t known much over a week. 

And just then Lucinda Keene remembered 
Daphne’s mother and the memory gave the lie to her 
comforting reflection. Daphne’s mother had fallen 
“dangerously in love” with a man she had known 
and danced with just one night. Lucinda shook her 
head as she marched off to the kitchen to see to 
assembling the cold lunch. She wished Mr. Loomis 
had decided to go back to town with his friends. 
She would gladly have packed his trunk for him 
and sent it after him. At least four hours on the 
river and a moon coming home! Heigho! There 
was nothing to do but let things take their course. 
By things, Mrs. Lucinda meant love naturally. She 
was not a Presbyterian but she knew that you 
couldn’t dam love any more than vou could dam fate. 



CHAPTER XII 




DAPHNE MISSES PRAYER MEETING 

Lucinda, coming downstairs that evening, jab¬ 
bing in her hat pins as she came, glanced in worried 
fashion at the grandfather clock in the hall. Five 
minutes of eight! And Daphne not home for all 
her promises and Peter’s. Lucinda pursed her lips 
severely. Such carelessness! Daphne should be 
well scolded. There was no excuse for it—none. 
If Peter Loomis had no idea of time Daphne should 
have had one for him. She was wearing her wrist 
watch. She must have known perfectly how late 
it was. It was outrageous—outrageous of both of 
them. She would give Peter Loomis a good piece 
of her mind when she saw him. There was no 
sense in,worrying a body out of a year’s growth just 
for sheer heedlessness if nothing worse. What 
would Robert say? He hated to have people come 
in late. And Daphne was to sing a solo, too. If 
she didn’t get in till the last minute she would be 
hot and blowzy and wouldn't do herself justice and 
her old piano teacher, Esther Bailey, was coming 
clear in from East Danversville to hear her too. 
It was a shame. 

Mrs. Lucinda found herself wishing that Daphne 

242 


DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 243 


was ten years younger—young enough to be sent 
to bed in disgrace. But if she had been ten years 
younger there wouldn’t have been any crazy man 
creature round upsetting things, going canoeing on 
the river prayer meeting night and heaven knows 
what not. 

By the time Mrs. Lucinda had sat on the 
porch five minutes fanning herself vigorously and 
rocking creakily, she had worked herself up into a 
rare fume of rage. One familiar figure after an¬ 
other passed and greeted her on the way to the 
meeting house. The clock had struck eight. If 
she didn’t start soon she would be making matters 
worse by being late herself, a thing that hadn’t hap¬ 
pened in twenty years, not indeed, since Daphne had 
fallen out of bed and bumped her head purple just 
the last minute, when Lucinda had her bonnet all on. 
What would Robert think? 

Finally she realized that it was nonsensical to 
wait any longer for the tardy culprits and she scur¬ 
ried churchward herself at a pace which suited 
neither the weather nor her avoirdupois. Mrs. 
Lucinda hated to hurry. It was one of her little 
vanities to be always ready in plenty of time for 
everything she attempted. There was no sense in 
being late or having to rush as if a thunder storm 
was chasing one in order to get where one wanted 
to be. But tonight she hurried feverishly though 
even in her speed she cast a glance backward now and 
then to see if by any chance Daphne was following. 



244 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Once the sound of hurrying footsteps made her 
stop short and turn around. But it wasn’t Daphne’s 
slim, young figure that was overtaking her. It was 
only her neighbor, Mira Higgins, about the last 
person in town that Mrs. Keene cared to talk with 
at the moment, she, whom Daphne had described 
to Peter as the champion gossip purveyor of 
Danversville. 

“Mercy, Mis’ Keene! I couldn’t believe it was 
you, so late. Where’s Daphne? Ain’t she home 
yet? I saw her starting out for the river this after¬ 
noon with your boarder but I didn’t see her come 
back.” 

Mrs. Keene grunted the admission that Daphne 
wasn’t back. Trust Mira not to miss a trick. That 
woman had eyes all round her head and a tongue 
hung in the middle forever swinging like a pendulum 
in a clock that never ran down. Goodness knew how 
many people in the village already knew that Daphne 
was canoeing with Mr. Loomis. And of course it 
would be nuts to Mira now to know that the child 
wasn’t back. No doubt she was bursting to spread it 
all over the village this minute and to make a bril¬ 
liantly embroidered affair of it at that. Mrs. Keene’s 
exasperation against Peter and Daphne grew in 
proportion to her distaste at having Mira know the 
facts of the case. 

“Seems as if she oughter be home by now. It’s 
most dark. You don’t suppose anything could have 
happened, do you? I’d as soon trust myself in one 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 245 


of these new fangled air ships as a canoe. It’s my 
opinion they are most as dangerous. Why, every 
week you read in the paper about people being 
drowned in ’em! Only just yesterday I saw 
how-” 

But what Mira had seen only yesterday escaped 
Mrs. Keene. Her neighbor’s words had started her 
mind on a new track. Up to this moment it had not 
occurred to her that Daphne’s failure to appear in 
the proper season might be due to anything more 
serious than youth’s blissful inattention to the 
passing of time and to the fulfillment of obligations, 
when it was enjoying itself. But now she found 
herself wondering if after all anything could have 
happened? A canoe was a ticklish thing even as 
Mira said. Was it possible—? Pshaw! Daphne 
knew her canoe and the river as Robert knew his 
Bible. Even if the canoe tipped over she could 
swim like a fish. You would have had to hold her 
down by main force under the water to drown her. 
And anyway Peter Loomis wasn’t the sort to let 
things happen—accidental things—though she wasn’t 
certain he was incapable of persuading Daphne to 
cut prayer meeting if it suited his purposes as it 
was quite probable it did—being his last night and 
everything. 

Mira was still babbling. 

“I can’t help thinking it is a risk to let a pretty 
girl like Daphne go off like that alone for hours 
and hours with a strange man that you don’t really 






246 PETER S BEST SELLER 


know anything about. I was sayin’ to Mis’ Brown 
this very afternoon-” 

But again Lucinda ceased to listen and went off 
following the course of her own thoughts. She was 
sharply angry with Daphne, with Peter, with Mira, 
with herself—most of all with herself. For after 
all wasn’t Mira right? What did she and Robert 
know about Peter Loomis that they trusted Daphne 
so unreservedly to him, let her spend hours in his 
society without question? And she who had prom¬ 
ised to keep her eye on the young man! A pretty 
mess she had made of things as it looked this minute. 
And Daphne blushing her head off over him! In 
her present perturbation that single unprecedented 
blush loomed as huge as a prairie fire in Mrs. Keene’s 
thoughts. Thank Heaven the man was going to¬ 
morrow ! But first let him see to it that he brought 
Daphne back safe to them tonight and be quick 
about it. 

All through service Lucinda kept hoping Daphne 
would come in and slip into the empty place in the 
pew beside her. But no Daphne came. She sent word 
up to Robert that Daphne had been detained but 
that it was quite all right and he need not worry. 
A hymn had to be substituted at the last minute for 
the solo that Daphne was to have sung. The Rev¬ 
erend Robert’s prayer wandered a little in spite of 
himself. He couldn’t understand Lucinda’s mes¬ 
sage. What should have detained Daphne? One 
did not let oneself be detained on prayer meeting 




DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 247 


night. It was not like Daphne to break her prom¬ 
ises. In spite of his wife’s injunction not to worry, 
he did worry and he felt a sure intuition that she 
was worrying too. 

Service over, he and Lucinda managed to get in 
a few low spoken words. No, Daphne wasn’t home 
when Lucinda left. But there was nothing in the 
world to worry about. The careless child had no 
doubt not noticed how time was flying and wouldn’t 
come in to meeting late. She was, of course, at 
home now. Where else should she be if not at 
home by nine-thirty? 

Lucinda was perfectly aware that Mira had lost 
no time in giving her version of the cause for 
Daphne’s non-appearance so far as known, plus the 
brilliant embroideries, of course. That was to be 
expected. It was also to be expected that there 
would be a little buzz and flurry of gossip over the 
affair. It would have been a serious offense under 
any circumstances for the parson’s niece to delib¬ 
erately stay away from prayer meeting, but to have 
stayed away canoeing on the river with a strange 
young man was little short of damning. Virtuous 
ladies exchanged significant glances and pursed 
proper lips, murmuring that they were glad their 
daughters didn’t <Jo things like that. But what could 
you expect considering her mother and that crazy 
father of hers? Just a public singer and a papist 
at that! 

Gentle, faded little Miss Bailey fluttered up, like 



248 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


a pale moth to tell Mrs. Keene how disappointed 
she had been to miss Daphne’s singing. 

“All the same,” she had added in that breathless, 
timid little voice of hers, as if she were afraid some¬ 
body might hear her confession—“all the same, Lu¬ 
cinda, I don’t blame her a bit—not a bit—not with 
that nice young man who is so dreadfully in love 
with her. I saw him at church last Sunday night 
and I watched his face while she was singing. I 
couldn’t help wishing that just once in my life by 
some miracle, somebody would have looked at me 
like that. Of course, it was a silly thought. Nobody 
ever did or would. I’m not like Daphne and though 
it is nice to play the piano, to sing as Daphne can 
sing is like having an angel’s gift. But don’t forget 
she is young—and—and there is a moon tonight. 
It must be beautiful on the river,’’ and wistfully 
the speaker patted Lucinda’s wrist kindly and reas¬ 
suringly, as much as to say, “You and I understand. 
Don’t worry about what the rest of them are saying.” 
Then she fluttered off vaguely as she had come, but 
somehow Lucinda did feel better for the sympathy 
of the pale, little old maid who, having had no 
romance in her own drab life, was still so exquisitely 
sensitive to its rainbow possibilities for the Daphnes 
of the world. 

Stepping out into the white night Lucinda was 
conscious that, thanks to Esther Bailey and the spell 
of the moonlight flooding the portals of the white 
church, Daphne’s offense was mitigated if not en- 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 249 


tirely pardoned. After all, wasn’t Esther right? 

Daphne was young and there was a moon and- 

Lucinda felt her lips relaxing into something that 
was almost a smile. She was recalling other white 
nights when she and Robert had also forgotten that 
there was such a thing as time, living for the moment 
in eternity. She even remembered one evening in 
particular when they had deliberately stayed away 
from evening service and gone buggy riding and 
Robert an all but ordained minister at that. Youth 
had its own code, its own imperious claims, its own 
religion. 

Just as she had succeeded in getting into a fairly 
serene frame of mind again, secure in her conviction 
that she would find Daphne waiting safe and peni¬ 
tent at the parsonage, Lucinda was again exasper¬ 
ated by the fact that Mira had waited for her and 
was suggesting that she “run in a moment” to get a 
certain recipe for oatmeal cookies which Lucinda 
had promised her. 

“I’m entertaining my Sunday school class to¬ 
morrow night for tea,” she explained volubly, “and 
I thought the cookies would be real tasty. Don’t you 
think so?” 

Lucinda grunted assent perforce. Naturally she 
was fully aware that her neighbor desired the excuse 
to go into the parsonage and see for herself whether 
Daphne was home or not far more than she desired 
the recipe for the “tasty” oatmeal cookies. 

Well, it wouldn’t matter. Mira would have her 




250 PETER S BEST SELLER 


pains for nothing. Of course Daphne would be 
home. She must be by now. But even as she stepped 
on the porch Lucinda’s heart sank. The porch was 
empty, the door closed, just as she had left it, the 
whole house dark and silent. 

She fished out her latch key and let herself and 
Mira in. Robert was coming a little later having 
paused to talk with one of the deacons. 

“I suppose the child went straight upstairs to 
bed the moment she came in,” she observed briskly 
for her neighbor’s benefit. “She was up at the Inn 
at a dance last night and didn’t get home until late 
so I reckon she is sound asleep by now. I’m all beat 
out myself. Seems as if I couldn’t wait to get into 
bed. I’ll get you the recipe right away. It is here 
in the desk drawer.” 

At which sufficiently broad hint Mira had little 
choice but to take her recipe and depart, silenced 
if not convinced. She found it convenient to sit 
for half an hour on her own front porch, rocking 
and fanning and keeping a watchful eye on the 
street and the meadow in case the wayfarers returned 
by the short cut from the river. The Reverend 
Robert came home and entered his quiet house 
shutting the door after him. But Daphne and the 
strange young man did not appear and finally Mira 
gave up and went to bed herself, at length somewhat 
reluctantly persuaded that Lucinda must have spoken 
the truth and that Daphne was really abed and asleep 
long ago. 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 251 


As a matter of fact nothing was farther from the 
case. Daphne was neither at home or asleep and 
Lucinda had all but known it, “felt it in her bones” 
as she hurried upstairs as soon as the front door 
had closed upon her too interested neighbor. Slowly, 
much more slowly, she descended the stairs. After 
ten o’clock and Daphne was not home. How could 
she ever tell Robert? 

But her husband was disposed or pretended to be 
disposed to make light of her anxiety. They must 
make allowance for the crazy impulses of youth. 
Probably when they found they were too late for 
prayer meeting they had decided they might as 
well make the most of the occasion since the beans 
were already spilled. After all, ten o’clock wasn’t 
very late. Daphne had often been out much later 
with Jimmy and nobody had thought anything about 
it. Robert rather thought he remembered being out 
much later himself with Lucinda some years ago. 
You couldn’t expect youth to wear old shoulders. 
And anyway no doubt they would be coming in at 
any moment now. 

All the same Lucinda observed that her husband 
did not go upstairs at once as he usually did after 
prayer meeting. Instead he lit a lamp in his study 
and sat down to peruse the current Missionary News. 
He seemed to be in a peculiarly placid frame of mind. 
But Lucinda, knitting fiercely beside him, was not 
deceived. She knew Robert was every bit as much 
disturbed as she was and that he too had his ear 





252 PETER S BEST SELLER 


cocked every instant for the sound of his niece’s 
step on the porch. 

Eleven o’clock! Eleven-thirty! The thing was 
becoming undeniably serious. Lucinda could think 
now of only two alternatives for explanation. Either 
some accident had occurred which wasn’t probable, 
or Peter and Daphne had run away together which 
was equally improbable. What should Daphne run 
away for, even granting the blush had meant some¬ 
thing and Esther Bailey had been right in asserting 
that Peter Loomis was very much in love? There 
was no tyrannical old father to forbid the bans, no 
elderly lover to be forsaken. Daphne might be ro¬ 
mantic but she wasn’t a sentimental fool nor was 
she a girl to hurt those who loved her by such 
thoughtless conduct. 

But what of Peter Loomis? What did they know 
about him? Was it possible that he was the kind 
of a cad to lure an inexperienced girl into a run away 
marriage to suit his own whim or purpose? Esther 
had insisted that the man cared for Daphne. Mrs. 
Lucinda herself remembered, all too vividly, how 
Peter had looked at the girl last night when she came 
out on the porch clad in her mother’s gown and 
wearing the shining splendor and unconscious lure 
of her own exquisite, fresh blooming womanhood. 
The look had been the look of a man in love. Men 
in love were not always masters of their conduct. A 
darker thought took possession of Lucinda, a fear 
such as she had never known gripped her. 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 253 


As if he sensed her agony Robert Keene looked 
up and put out his hand letting it rest upon hers 
gently and reassuringly. 

“Don’t worry, dear,” he said using the term of 
affection rare upon his lips, though often in his eyes 
when he looked at his wife. “I am sure that Daphne 
is safe with Peter. He is that kind of man.’’ 

It was the first time Robert had ever called his 
guest Peter. It was reassuring but it was not 
enough. 

“How do we know what kind of a man he is? 
What has he done with her? Why isn’t she home 
with us if she is safe and all right?’’ Lucinda de¬ 
manded sharply. 

The Reverend Robert shook his head sadly. 

The clock struck twelve with measured impersonal 
intonation. 

“I don’t know, my dear,’’ murmured Robert when 
the clock ceased and the terrible silence was reestab¬ 
lished in the room. “We can only wait and hope and 
trust that all is well. She is in God’s hands wherever 
she is. We must not forget that.’’ 

It was on the tip of Lucinda’s tongue to retort 
that it wasn’t much use having Daphne in God’s 
hands if Peter Loomis happened to be a scoundrel. 
You couldn’t leave too much to God. Lucinda had 
found it prudent usually to do some of the safe¬ 
guarding of things herself, particularly the safe¬ 
guarding of her niece, Daphne. It seemed to her 
now in the stress of her anxiety that she had failed 




254 PETER S BEST SELLER 


miserably in her duty to the child. She ought never 
to have let Daphne go off like that with a man she 
had known scarcely over a week, particularly as he 
was a man who could and did look upon her with 
a lover’s eyes. Now that the horse was perhaps 
stolen, like most of the rest of us waking up to a 
similar predicament, she couldn’t for the life of her 
see how she could possibly have been so remiss. 

“Pray, Robert,” she commanded fiercely. “I can’t 
stand just sitting here doing nothing. Pray.” 

And Robert Keene knelt with Lucinda beside him 
and prayed fervently to God to keep his little girl 
safe that night and bring her back to them unharmed, 
if it be His gracious will. 

Lucinda couldn’t help rejecting the “if” with 
mental reservations. Her religion was not so far 
advanced as Robert’s especially where Daphne was 
concerned. There was no if for Lucinda in Daphne’s 
case. The Lord had simply got to take care of her 
that was all. 

When Peter and Daphne started down the river 
that afternoon, the limpid, honey-colored sunshine 
encompassed the meadows and cast its spell on the 
two young people. 

It was only a little river, winding its way light 
heartedly between its thickly wooded banks where 
silver meadow rue and now and then a flaming stalk 
of cardinal flower or belated golden wood lily flashed 
out from among the blue green of pines and spruces 
and the glossy green of the laurels, with occasionally 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 255 


a white birch standing out from the rest like a slender 
princess among the green clad courtiers of the wood. 
Overhead the laziest and fleeciest of summer clouds 
drifted across the clear blue of the sky and beneath, 
sapphire-winged insects darted to and fro in the 
amber currents of the stream. 

It was Peter lolling among the cushions while 
Daphne plied her paddle with the effortless, deft 
stroke of long experience, who broke the silence 
which had been rather unusually long between them 
in their daze of contentment with the weather, the 
scene, the pleasant motion and themselves—more 
especially, we dare say, with themselves. Daphne, 
in her soft crepy blue gown, was extraordinarily 
“easy to look at” as the modern vernacular has it, 
and Peter had taken full advantage of his oppor¬ 
tunity. Now at length he willed to speak. 

“Daphne Re-Joyce,” he drawled. “Something 
very important happened last night. Did you 
know it?” 

Daphne’s paddle flashed in mid-air. Taken una¬ 
ware a wave of delicate color flooded her cheeks 
under her golden tan. Luckily Peter’s attention was 
momentarily distracted by a kingfisher who darted 
suddenly—an arrow of vivid blue out of the laurels. 

“No, I didn’t know it,” lied Daphne who had lain 
awake the half of the night she had not danced away, 
realizing that something important had happened. 
“What was it that happened?” Her voice was quite 
steady as she asked the question. Did the wily 




256 PETER S BEST SELLER 


serpent back in the garden of Eden teach Eve the 
mystic art of how to parry and thrust and keep a 
man from “knowing” until the time comes for the 
revelation? And did Eve hand it down to all her 
daughters unto the nth generation that the shield 
of a woman’s pride may be invulnerable at whatever 
cost to her soul? What every woman knows is the 
unwritten book which no man may read so long as 
men and women shall be upon the earth. 

“Well, you see, it was this way,” went on Peter, 
trailing his hand idly through the water as he spoke. 
“While you were flirting so scandalously with the 
young galoots, I chanced to be sitting in a shady 
corner of the porch with Marian.” 

Peter paused as if in no hurry at all to relate his 
tale. This time Daphne’s paddle dipped too deep, 
sending up an angry swirl of white water and bubbles 
as it lunged. 

“Well?” she challenged. “Do go on, Peter. 
What happened while I was flirting so scandalously 
with the young galoots and you chanced to be sitting 
in a shady corner of the porch with Marian?” 
Daphne’s tone was as ironically cool as Marian’s 
own might have been, as cool as the water swirling 
around her paddle but her heart was beating rather 
fast, so fast it almost hurt. What was Peter going 
to say? Had it anything to do with that wordless 
message Marian had sent him with her eyes at 
parting last evening? 

“In the course of our very interesting conversa- 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 257 


tion,” continued Peter, “Marian was so kind as to 
su gg es t that I write another book.” 

“I don’t see that there is anything very original 
about that. I thought that was what everybody had 
been doing all along.” 

“True. But Marian went farther. She made me 
want to write a book.” 

“I see,” murmured Daphne, but as a matter of 
fact she did not see at all, at least not at all dis¬ 
tinctly. The very trees seemed to be dancing up 
and down before her eyes and very absurd they 
looked, too, doing it standing on their heads as they 
were. And everything else had a ridiculous gray 
blur for which there was no reason whatever as the 
sun was still shining very brightly. So it was to 
Marian that belonged the honor of making Peter 
want to write another book. No wonder her eyes 
had had something to say to him last night after 
that. 

“She was even so obliging as to provide me with 
a motif so to speak,” Peter droned on. “An extraor¬ 
dinarily fascinating theme. Indeed I think I might 
go so far as to call it the most fascinating theme 
conceivable—namely myself.” 

“Yourself!” puzzled Daphne, staring at Peter 
now instead of at the dancing trees. 

“Myself,” reiterated Peter, settling himself even 
more comfortably among the cushions, delighted at 
having so attentive an audience. “Marian suggested 
that I do something along the line of Every Man 



258 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


His Own Hero, Keep The Home Ports Dredging, 
Buy Of Your Local Grocer, as it were. What do 
you think of me for a leitmotif?” he teased. 

“I suppose it would be immensely congenial to 
your egotism,” remarked Daphne beginning to 
paddle again. 

“Scarcely. Not if I take Marian’s idea which was, 
I take it, to treat myself and my sex rather brutally 
and truthfully not to say damningly. You see 
Marian did not provide me with a theme as a boy 
scout does a good turn. She didn’t know she was 
providing me with a theme at all. She was merely 
registering immense and unmitigated disapproval of 
your humble servant and all his ways. She accuses 
me of being temperamentally unstable—a sort of 
incorrigible Passionate Pilgrim.” 

“I see,” said Daphne again and this time she did 
see at least something of what he was talking. 
Marian must have delivered the second lecture of 
the evening to Peter in person but the lecture had 
apparently been more or less on the same general 
subject as the first one to which she herself had 
been the not too willing audience. Peter’s precari¬ 
ousness must have sat particularly heavy on Miss 
Somers’ mind last night. She wondered what else 
Marian had had to say to Peter. “And you think 
there is a book in it?” she asked. “I mean in your¬ 
self—the Passionate Pilgrim?” 

“I know there is—the very devil of a book, if I 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 259 


can capture it. And I can. It is already half caught. 
I worked all night.” 

“Peter! You have really begun it?” incredu¬ 
lously. In her excitement she forgot to paddle, for¬ 
got herself. In her delight that this thing she had 
desired so passionately was about to come to pass, 
she entirely lost the self-consciousness which had 
been troubling her since last evening and became the 
old free-souled Daphne again, interested not so much 
in Peter the man and potential lover as in Peter the 
writer, the potential creator of a great book. 

“Bet your life Fve begun it,” said Peter brandish¬ 
ing his long arms in triumph to the consternation of 
a surprised dragon fly that had been quietly passing 
about his own business when Peter began to gyrate. 
“It kept me dragged at its chariot wheels all night. 
I can’t lose it now. I’ve got it—the substance of it 
on paper and in my head.” 

“But how could you leave it today?” wondered 
Daphne. “I should have thought you would have 
felt like keeping at it every minute if it has gone 
so far as that.” 

“So I should maybe under other circumstances. 
So I shall when I get down to the brass tacks of 
the business later. But there are other things to 
make in this world besides books. You know that, 
Daphne Joyce. Tomorrow I am going away—to 
bury myself until I get the thing out of my system. 
But today—today was ours.” 

Daphne did not speak. She was wary of Peter’s 



260 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Beginnings which led up so naturally yet artfully to 
something and then floated off somewhere else, ap¬ 
parently as aimlessly as the heaped-up piles of 
clouds over their heads. Besides she had a queer 
feeling that she did not want Peter to say anything 
personal just now. She couldn’t have stood another 
of his nonsensical proposals. She would have been 
almost equally troubled if he had asked her to 
marry him in earnest. She wanted to drift, too, 
this afternoon just as the canoe was drifting. She 
did not look at Peter now. She watched the water 
rippling against the banks. She was keenly alive 
to the ecstatic call of the wood thrush fluting out of 
some not far distant glade. All her senses seemed 
tuned to the highest degree of exquisite sensitive¬ 
ness until it seemed as if nothing beautiful—no 
matter how small—could escape her notice. 

A gold-winged butterfly shimmered out from a 
mass of orchid-hued milk weed, hovered a moment 
between Peter and Daphne and then vanished beyond 
ken. An elusive thing a butterfly—a little like love 
in that respect as in others. 

Peter was speaking again now, saying something 
extraordinarily unexpected even for him. 

“Did it ever occur to you that we might be wrong 
about Jimmy Danvers?” he asked. “I looked him 
over quite carefully last night. He is young. But 
that mends itself all too easily in this world. And 
he is regular—more regular really than the tem¬ 
porary instability of the love motif which, being 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 261 


young, he chances to be experiencing gives evidence 
of. Once his mating is satisfactorily accomplished 
he will make a fine husband. After all, you know, 
my dear, there is a good deal to be said for regu¬ 
larity. The regulars make altogether the best 
husbands. You always know where they are. You 
can lay your finger on them any moment, morally 
as well as physically. They don’t drift from their 
moorings.” 

“Alas, no,” said Daphne. “I understand all that, 
Peter. I understood most of it even before you 
came to Danversville. I looked quite carefully at 
Jimmy myself last night. I am sorry to disappoint 
you if you are about to revoke your counsel not to 
marry Jimmy. I am not going to marry him. But 
I don’t want to talk about Jimmy or myself or mar¬ 
riage. I want to talk about your book. Can you 
tell me about it—the story?” 

“I can,” admitted Peter cheerfully. “But not now. 
I never tell stories on an empty stomach. When do 
we lunch?” 

“Materialist!” smiled Daphne. “Whenever you 
like.” 

“Then I vote now—the sooner the better. Re¬ 
member I ate at the Tower Hill Inn this noon. It 
was not like home. Aunt Lucinda’s meals are mild 
but they satisfy,” he quoted with a twinkle. 

“Can you wait until we get to shore or would you 
prefer to eat here in the canoe?” 



262 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Peter scanned the slope near which the canoe 
drifted. 

“Shore, please. I always feast in fairyland when 
I can just as easily as not, don’t you?’’ 

Daphne smiled assent and sent the canoe shore¬ 
ward with a few practised strokes. In ten min¬ 
utes the two were seated in a charming glade 
surrounded by tall ferns and with little elfin circles 
of gay colored toadstools all about them and scarlet- 
berried partridge vines running riot among the pine 
needles. Perhaps after all it was a bit of fairyland. 
Who knows whether the little people were not really 
there peeping mischievously out from behind the 
orange and rose toadstools or drinking their guests’ 
health from the red cupped moss? Just because 
Peter and Daphne did not see them does not prove 
they were not there. Peter and Daphne were not 
seeing so very much but each other that afternoon. 

Peter’s voracious appetite being at length as¬ 
suaged, he leaned against a pine trunk very much 
as he had leaned that first lucky Tuesday and began 
to talk about his book. 

Twilight comes early in the wood. Already the 
sun had almost gone down behind the slope. Only 
a few belated, pale gold rays lingered, as if loath 
to leave the enchanted spot, and found the answer¬ 
ing gold in Daphne’s hair. The thrushes still fluted 
almost incessantly from the deeps of the forest. 
Otherwise it was very still. Not the faintest breath 
of wind stirred the leaves or made music in the 




DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 263 


pines. The hush was almost uncanny. The whole 
wood seemed to be waiting as Daphne was to hear 
Peter’s story. 

“Of course, I don’t mean that my hero—if you 
can call him that—is a literal transcription of my¬ 
self,” he was saying. “Literal transcriptions, 
whether of personality or plot aren’t fiction stuff 
until they have been subject to a kind of chemical 
process of melting and fusing. The idea is to take 
a character of the general Passionate Pilgrim type 
of whom I am a fair or a disgraceful example, 
according as you view us, and develop the pilgrim 
impulse to an exaggerated point. As I said, he is 
not at all a heroic person unless you can count his 
intense love of beauty on that score. There is 
something rather heroic about that I fancy—at least 
it was developed on a heroic scale in him, poor devil. 
It is that that causes most of the trouble with your 
pilgrims. They always think something else is 
more beautiful than what they can have and some 
other land more beautiful than the one they happen 
to be in. In a way we are all passionate pilgrims 
especially in youth. You can understand that, 
Daphne Joyce. You have felt the tug yourself 
pulling you magnet wise somewhere else.” 

Daphne nodded. Well indeed she understood. 

“In youth we feel the pull strongest because we 
haven’t learned to accept compromise, made truce 
with necessity, taken upon ourselves the yoke of the 



264 PETER S BEST SELLER 


commonplace,” continued Peter warming to his 
subject. 

The yoke of the commonplace! The phrase 
stabbed Daphne sharply. All her hot youth cried 
out against it. She felt like praying to God a wild 
pagan kind of prayer running something like this: 
“Dear God, hurt me, drive sharp silver swords into 
me, do anything to me only don’t let me be crushed 
down. Don’t let me wear the yoke of the common¬ 
place. Anything but that—anything.” She wanted 
to taste the wine of life to the uttermost even if 
she had to tread the press herself, bare-footed and in 
travail first. She wanted to live with all her might 
even if it was only for a little while. When she 
was old it would not matter. Nothing would matter. 
She would be willing then to make truce with neces¬ 
sity, yes, even wear the yoke of the commonplace 
but not now. Let her live first. 

She began to listen again to Peter. 

“Mind you I am not decrying those who surrender. 
They are the salt of the earth. The others are the 
exotic, unnecessary flavors. It is these who forego 
the quest, put by the cup untasted or at best a 
moment only after their lips have touched it who 
are the only real heroes and heroines. It is they 
who carry the human burdens on their shoulders, 
in whom the abiding things in the soil of the world 
root deeply. We could never get on without them. 
But some of us—and such is my protagonist—remain 
passionate pilgrims to the end. We cannot change 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 265 


or make ourselves over. Travellers incarnate we are 
and travellers we die. Scarcely ever do we own 
homes or make them. We must ever be foot-free. 
Understand, Daphne Joyce ?” 

“Yes, Peter, I think I understand,” said Daphne 
quietly. 

“He—my man—worships at many shrines, fancies 
himself in love more than once, until waking from 
the dream so often, he comes to distrust—not love, 
but his own power to love as greatly as his soul 
demands to do. And then of a sudden he meets Her 
—the girl he has been unconsciously or half- 
consciously seeking far and wide, all his life, his 
comrade—his mate—his One Woman. There isn’t 
any doubt in his mind. The moment he sees her, 
he realizes that here at last he has found the Great 
Adventure, that he can love as tremendously as he 
had dreamed even in the maddest, most dreamful 
hour of his youth. But, Daphne, for once he ran 
counter to type. He did the one unselfish thing of 
his life. He went away.” 

“Not telling her he loved her?” 

“Not telling her he loved her. She was years 
younger than he and there was another man of her 
own age who loved her and who could give her all 
he himself never could—quiet home life, certitude, 
peace of mind, serenity, placid devotion. Married 
to a passionate pilgrim, what chance has any woman 

for happiness ? What chance has she to develop her 

/ 

own soul? She would have had to be content to 



266 PETER S BEST SELLER 


rise and follow him to the ends of the earth without 
an hour’s warning perhaps, sometimes to submit to 
a still harder thing—to smile bravely and wish him 
Godspeed when he went faring where she might not 
follow, never reproaching him, never calling him 
back to her side by the tyranny of tears or passion, 
knowing that he must go and that, though he loved 
her greatly, aloneness or a world of men must for¬ 
ever be the dominant need of his spirit when the 
mood was upon him. It was too much to ask of 
any woman. He did not ask it. He went away.” 

“And the woman—what became of her?” 

“She married the other man and he made a 
gracious home for her and she bore him fine children 
and their life together was good in the sight of the 
Lord.” 

“And she forgot the Passionate Pilgrim? And 
was happy?” mused Daphne. 

“She was happy. But perhaps she did not entirely 
forget. I like to believe she thought of him some¬ 
times at twilight when the thrushes were singing 
and the rest of the world was so still you could hear 
the dim, far away voices of the past calling, calling, 
calling—not to be hushed. I hope she thought kindly 
of him and was a bit sorry for him, poor devil, 
knowing how much he had missed.” 

Peter ceased speaking and Daphne was silent, too, 
asking no more questions. The thrushes still called 
to each other through the fragrant dusk. 

Suddenly Daphne stirred and looked around her 



DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 267 


realizing to her consternation that it was full night. 

Hastily she snatched up the basket and started 
down the path calling to Peter to follow as it was 
very, very late. They must hurry. Peter caught 
up with her, taking the basket from her hand. He 
was not at all in so much haste as Daphne however. 
For the life of him he could not get up much ex¬ 
citement over a single prayer meeting missed in a 
whole lifetime of prayer meetings. His mind was on 
other far more vital things. 

Suddenly he saw Daphne pause and heard her 
utter a sharp little cry of dismay. He quickened his 
pace and stood beside her at the river’s edge. The 
water rippled by as placidly as when they had left 
it in the sunshine. The pines crooned gently over 
head as before. A few stars were faintly visible in 
the sky in which the aftermath of day still lingered. 
Night was here. But far as the eye reached up 
and down the little river, there was no canoe. It 
had vanished as utterly as if it had never been. 

Blankly Peter and Daphne stared at each other. 

“It appears,” drawled Peter, “that she got tired 
of waiting for us and went home to prayer meeting 
without us or else the fairies spirited it away in 
revenge for our trespassing.” 

“Peter, don’t joke. It is awful. I thought I 
pulled it up high enough on the shore and I didn’t 
tie it. It must have worked its way free. It is 
probably half-way to Windham by now in this cur- 



268 PETER S BEST SELLER 


rent. Hqw under the sun are we going to get 
home?” 

“Looks as if it might be under the moon if at 
all,” commented Peter. “What is the solution to 
the puzzle? Any ferries or bridges lurking in the 
vicinity? We seem to be on the wrong side of 
Jordan.” 

“There isn’t a ferry and there isn’t a bridge 
nearer than Windham which must be all of four 
miles from here.” 

“Even if we swam the Hellespont we should still 
be quite some distance from Danversville I take it.” 

“We certainly should. What an absurd situation! 
I never heard of such a pair of ninnies in my life, 
There is nothing to do I suppose but to go back up 
into the woods and work through to the pike. It 
can’t be more than a mile and a half. When we 
strike the pike we can probably get somebody to 
take us home. No prayer meeting, worse luck!” 

“Personally I can relinquish prayer meeting with¬ 
out any great weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
teeth. Still-” 

But Daphne was not waiting for his commentary. 
Already she had plunged bravely back into the pitchy 
blackness of the woods. 

The forest was wonderful at night, deliciously 
fragrant and full of mysterious little whispering and 
crackling sounds that Daphne never remembered 
hearing by day. Everything was thickly overlaid 
with deep, disturbing but enchanting shadows. It 




DAPHNE MISSES MEETING 269 


was queer but she did not feel at all frightened. It 
was indeed inexplicably natural being with Peter 
in the woods at night. If only one could manage 
to forget prayer meeting and the way Uncle Robert 
and Aunt Lucinda must be worrying and Peter’s 
fascinating but sad story of the Passionate Pilgrim 
who went away not telling the girl he loved her or 
letting her decide for herself whether she preferred 
to be suitably rooted or to take the trail with her 
pilgrim who could not desist from wandering even 
for love’s sake, one would be really and truly glad 
it had all happened just as it had. 

On and on they went, deeper and deeper into the 
wood. East, west, north, south—so far as one could 
see or feel nothing but trees, trees and yet more 
trees. Daphne thought she could scarcely have 
believed there were so many trees in the world. 
Except for herself and Peter, there seemed to be 
indeed nothing but trees in the world, trees and the 
far away purple black vault which was sky. 

Presently Peter halted and Daphne paused too, 
uncertainly. 

“Daphne Joyce, there seems no reasonable room 
for doubt that we are pretty thoroughly lost. It has 
gone cloudy and there isn’t even a star to orientate 
ourselves by. Have you any idea where your pike 
is concealing itself?” 

Daphne had to admit meekly that she hadn’t the 
veriest ghost of an idea. 

“That being the case,” continued Peter judicially, 



270 PETER S BEST SELLER 


“the sensible course for us to pursue is to cease 
pursuing. We may as well pitch camp for the 
night.” 

Daphne stared at Peter. 

“You mean we have got to stay here all night?” 
she asked. 

“So it looks. You aren’t afraid, are you, Daphne 
Joyce ?” 

“Why, no,” said Daphne, 
you.” 


“Not afraid—not with 




CHAPTER XIII 


IN STRANGE PLACES 

Somewhere in the distance a fox barked. 
Daphne shivered and drew a step nearer to Peter. 

“It is a little—scary, isn’t it?’’ she said softly as 
if she did not wish to disturb the quiet slumber of 
the wood. 

“Not a bit of it,” denied Peter. “The woods are 
the safest, most beautiful place in all the world to 
sleep in. You’ll see.” 

“Sleep!” exclaimed Daphne wide-eyed. “Why, 
Peter, I couldn’t sleep. It is too—too still.” 

He laughed. 

“You’ll sleep all right. Never fear. Such a sleep 
as you never knew in all your life. Wait here a 
moment. I want to scout about a bit and find a 
suitable bivouac.” 

“Don’t go far,” begged Daphne a little dubiously. 

The night suddenly seemed very big, almost over¬ 
whelming in fact, and herself appallingly small by 
comparison especially when Peter moved away from 
her into the darkness. 

“I won’t be gone but a jiffy,” he reassured. 
“Sing to keep your spirits up and so I’ll know you 
are all right.” 


271 


272 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


He patted her shoulder as if she were a child that 
had drifted into his protection, then strolled off into 
the night and the woods, leaving Daphne a little 
awed if not exactly frightened by the strangeness of 
the experience and the environment. 

Following Peter’s suggestion she began to sing 
softly at first, and then as she became accustomed 
to the sound of her own voice in the silence of the 
wood, she began to let her voice out until it soared 
high and free, a gift upon the holy altar of the night. 
It was a hymn she chose. Somehow the solemn 
hush of her surroundings made any other kind of 
music seem profane. Besides, Daphne knew more 
hymns than she did any other kind of music. A 
hymn rose most easily and naturally upon her lips 
now. 

“ ‘Hark! Hark, my soul!’ ” she sang, her voice 
taking on a cadence of almost unearthly beauty Peter 
thought, as he listened, deeply stirred. 

“ ‘Singing to welcome, the pilgrims, the pilgrims 
of the night!’ ” The song ended. “Peter, are you 
there ? Aren’t you coming back ?” called the singer. 

But already Peter was at her side. 

“Right here, Daphne Joyce. Pilgrims of the night 
is right. But don’t you care. I have found a hol¬ 
low just meant for a skylark to nest in. Come on 
and see how it fits your wings.” And taking her 
hand in his, Peter guided the girl to a sheltered 
nook, protected from the wind and scooped out as if 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


273 


it were, indeed, meant for a woodland bower. 
“Here you are, Mademoiselle Skylark. Will it do?” 

Daphne sat down in the hollow, curled up like a 
child, smiled up at Peter, a smile he felt rather than 
saw in the darkness. She was such an independent, 
poised young person usually. This Daphne who 
depended upon him, clung to him, trusted him as a 
child trusts its elders, was new and very sweet to 
his man’s strength. 

“It is a perfect nest,” she said. “My wings feel 
very happy in it. Oh, how tall the trees are and how 
far away the sky looks! But see, there is a star.” 
She sat up to point out the twinkling splendor of 
that other world away up beyond the pine tops. “It 
is beautiful here, isn’t it? I don’t think I ever knew 
it was like this in the woods at night—so sacred and 
mysterious as if God were walking so close to us 
we could almost feel his breath. 

‘Closer is He than breathing 
And nearer than hands and feet ¥ 

I never quite knew what that meant before. Now I 
do. I never felt so close to Him in church—never. 
If only I could forget how they must be worrying 
at home I should be glad it happened. No, I am 
glad. I have a feeling as if I had come home at 
last, as if I were just where I belonged, after seek¬ 
ing and seeking everywhere. It is a strange feeling 
—but very wonderful,” she sighed. 

Peter stared down at her, his eyes half closed, his 



274 PETER S BEST SELLER 


lips set a little taut. A moment ago when he had 
heard Daphne’s lovely voice out of the stillness of 
the night she had seemed as remote from him as if 
she were herself an angel, a being from another 
world. But now she was no angel, just a woman, 
very close to him, the heart of the woods her home, 
her own heart athrill with life and tremendous, 
elemental things, half understood. Could any 
priest with bell and book, any man-made altar make 
marriage more sacred than it might be in a quiet 
forest with a star looking down and God so near 
you could almost hear Him breathe? But these 
were not thoughts to think just now and Peter put 
them from him. 

Daphne snuggled contentedly back in her nest, 
maidenly unconscious of what was surging like a 
strong tide in the man standing so quietly beside her. 

“Aren’t you going to sit down, Peter?” she asked. 
“You look as tall as a pine tree up there and hor¬ 
ribly far away. Talk to me. I don’t want to go to 
sleep—forever.” 

Peter dropped on the mound beside her hollow. 

“Want my coat?” he asked casually. 

“No, indeed. I have my sweater and I am per¬ 
fectly warm and more contented than you can im¬ 
agine. There must be a spell in the woods tonight. 
I don’t seem to have any pangs of conscience about 
prayer meeting or propriety or anything.” She 
laughed softly and there was a kind of elfin mischief 
in her laughter’s lilting music. “Just think how 




IN STRANGE PLACES 275 


Danversville will damn us, Peter,” she murmured, 
“if it finds out. And, of course, it will find out. It 
always finds out everything sooner or later, usually 
sooner.” 

“I am afraid being damned isn’t precisely a joke, 
Daphne Joyce, especially for a girl,” said Peter, 
rather gravely for him. 

Daphne flung out one hand in a gesture of rebel¬ 
lion at his reminder. 

“Oh, I know. You can’t tell me anything what it 
will be like. I know Danversville as you can’t pos¬ 
sibly know it. Their tongues will wag about me, 
just as I have heard them wag about other girls, just 
as they wagged about my mother. Let ’em wag. I 
don’t care except that it will hurt Uncle Robert and 
Aunt Lucinda. They are hateful—people, I mean. 
They want to hurt,” sharply. 

“Oh, no, they don’t, Daphne. You are mistaken. 
They are really kind underneath. You have seen 
the very worst of the damners put themselves out 
enormously for any one in trouble. I know you 
have. It isn’t that they mean to be vindictive. They 
are just a little dull and near-sighted maybe. They 
can’t see underneath and around the corner of 
things. That kind isn’t peculiar to Danversville. 
You find them everywhere the world over, people 
who judge because they can’t understand. It is 
probably a wise dispensation. If you understand 
too much you don’t judge or fear judgment. You 
might even get to—not judging yourself—which is 




276 PETER S BEST SELLER 


dangerous. We need the judgment people—for 
ballast.” 

“Well, I hate judgment people,” stormed Daphne 
like a wilful child who did not want to be convinced 
that she was wrong. “And I hate judgment. And 
I am not going to think about tomorrow. I am 
going to enjoy tonight. It will be something to 
remember when I am a sedate old maid or married 
to some excellent, proper, stupid young man, living 
an excellent, proper, stupid life. And you—why, 
Peter—I suppose this isn’t even a little adventure 
to you. Your life has been packed so full of big 
adventures.” 

It was on the tip of Peter’s tongue to retort that 
on the contrary it was quite the biggest and most 
perilous adventure of his life. But he held his 
peace. He rather thought Daphne was right when 
she said there was a spell in the woods that night. 
He knew he had to look clear lest he be himself 
enthralled. 

“The last adventure is always the best for me,” he 
said lightly. “Did I ever tell you about the night 
I spent with a wounded tigress in an Indian jungle?” 

“No,” said Daphne. “Tell me,, Peter.” She 
drew her sweater about her and quietly relaxed, 
looking up at her star, listening dreamily while 
Peter spun tale after tale in the darkness for her. 

And at last she drifted off to sleep not at all sus¬ 
pecting she was going to do it. And Peter gently 
covered her with his coat and moved quietly off a 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


277 


little distance where he settled himself under an oak 
tree and, smoking cigarette after cigarette, kept 
vigil during the long hours of the night, thinking, 
long, long thoughts. 

At last Daphne stirred and called “Peter.” 

In a moment he was kneeling beside her. It was 
nearing dawn now and already there was a stir of life 
around them in the woods. A little breeze tiptoed 
though the poplar leaves setting them aquiver. A 
bird here and there uttered a sleepy twitter. In the 
dim light Daphne’s face took on an ethereal, fragile 
loveliness like a lily. 

“What is it, Daphne girl?” asked Peter softly, 
bending over her. 

Her eyes were closed. He saw that she was still 
asleep, evidently dreaming. 

“Don’t leave me, Peter. The night is so big,” she 
murmured. “And so still—so still I hear music.” 

He bent closer over the sleeper and let one hand 
rest gently upon her shoulder. 

“I am here, Daphne, right beside you,” he reas¬ 
sured. 

“Are you, Peter? I thought you were ever so 
far away. I love you. Didn’t you know? Kiss 
me, Peter.” 

Peter’s kisses fell like rain upon her forehead, 
her cheeks, her eyelids. 

A sudden, more boisterous wind swept through 
the trees with a tumult and rustle. A bird piped out 
clear and sweet. Peter straightened, with a strong 



278 PETER S BEST SELLER 


effort of will, as if the bird had recalled him to his 
sense of fitness and loyalty. Daphne’s brown eyes 
opened slowly, stared amazedly at Peter. Then a 
hot flush swept her cheeks, making her once again 
all rose instead of lily. She sat up, put both hands 
over her cheeks, as if to cool their burning. Her 
eyes questioned Peter, troubled, anxious, ashamed. 

“I—I’ve been dreaming,” she admitted. 

“So you have, child. I hope it wasn’t a scary 
dream. I shouldn’t have told you about tigers and 
such just before you went to sleep. All right now?” 

“Peter, did I say anything out loud?” Her eyes 
lowered now as she asked the question. 

“Only my name,” lied Peter gallantly. “I just 
heard you and came over and then you woke up.” 

“Oh, was that all? I was afraid-” she broke 

off. “Why, Peter, it’s morning!” 

She looked around her in surprise at the discovery. 

“Sure it is morning, Daphne Joyce. See that 
gold streak over there. Yonder lies the east. We 
can take the trail any time now. And listen! We’ll 
have a full Pilgrim’s Chorus to travel by.” 

Daphne listened. The whole wood seemed sud¬ 
denly to be bursting into song as a hundred glad 
throated little choristers greeted the coming day. 
She rose, facing the east. Through the pines a pale 
yellow light filtered and the shivering poplar leaves 
were each a tiny heart of transparent gold. Daphne 
held out her hands to the sun. 

“Beautiful Day!” she sighed. “You are beautiful 





IN STRANGE PLACES 


279 


but you aren’t quite so beautiful as night—nor so 
wonderful.” She turned from the sun to Peter 
watching her with grave interest and intentness. 
“Maybe there will never be such another wonderful 
night,” she added, a wistful look in her brown eyes. 

“And maybe there will be nights much, much 
more wonderful,” said Peter. “I could almost dare 
prophesy that there will be. But come on, Gypsy. 
Morning waits at the end of the world.” 

“And Aunt Lucinda and Danversville are waiting, 

too,” groaned Daphne. “Very well, Peter. Lead 
>> 

on. 

By the light of the rising sun it was almost 
absurdly easy to find the road which had so Puck- 
ishly evaded their search in the darkness. A half 
hour of brisk journeying and they came to it, 
stretching placidly to left and right, and opposite 
them, -over the wall, a bearded grain field, billowing 
and glistening like a golden sea in the sunshine. 

“Good morning, Pike,” greeted Peter affably, 
doffing his cap. “Well met, Good Pike. What can 
you do for us this fine morning? Ah, I see you are 
inclined to be hospitable. Behold a clever wash 
basin and mirror combined. Go to it, Daphne 
Joyce.” Peter pointed to a slender little brook that 
ran along the roadside between them and the grain 
field and which widened just here and made a little 
pool among the rocks. “I’ll stroll down the road a 
bit for a look-see,” he added sauntering off to the 



280 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


right, leaving Daphne to make her morning toilet at 
the “clever wash basin and mirror combined.” 

The cool, refreshing water on her face and hands 
made Daphne feel like a new person, and bending, 
Psyche-like, over the pool she adjusted her disar¬ 
rayed amber locks and straightened and smoothed 
her gray-blue crepy gown which had come out rather 
better than might have been expected from the 
forest couch. Indeed, by the time Peter came back 
from his “look-see,” Daphne was practically restored 
to the dainty immaculateness which had been hers 
yesterday afternoon when they had started out 
together. 

Peter approached, whistling, hands in pockets, 
looking blithe and debonair and boyish. The out- 
of-doors was certainly his native element. So 
Daphne, watching him, reflected. You could not 
imagine Peter pilloried to a desk or shut in behind 
wires any more than you could imagine Jimmy 
spending a night under the open skies for any 
reason. Poor Jimmy! He missed a good deal. 

“See any houses?” she asked Peter. “I don’t just 
know where we are though it looks familiar.” 

“Not in the plural. There was a house, a rather 
pompous, formidable, white Colonial affair set back 
at the end of an avenue of maples, as if it did not 
care to mix with common folks. Here’s hoping the 
owner is at home and boasts a Henry or at least a 
bay nag and buggy we can hire, borrow or steal.” 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


281 


“Peter! A big, white house, and an avenue of 
maples ? And is there a windmill and a red barn ?” 

“Wind mill and barn also present to the best of 
my recollection. What then? Know where we 
are?” 

“I should think I did. That house is my Grand¬ 
father Keene’s old place, the house my mother and 
Uncle Robert were born in.” 

“Well, well! Truth is stranger and so forth. 
Anybody live there?” 

“There may be a care-taker. It belongs to Uncle 
Robert’s cousin, Paul Clement. I don’t believe he 
is likely to be here though. They say he hated the 
place and only comes there once in a while with a 
wild house party, the kind that would make Grand¬ 
father Keene turn over in his grave if he knew.’’ 

“So Cousin Paul is a humdinger. That makes it 
all the more interesting. Maybe we shall discover 
a Rolls Royce instead of a Henry. Wait till I get 
a dip and then we will proceed to see what miracles 
we can work off of Cousin Paul.” 

Dip was the word. Kneeling by the brown pool, 
Peter ducked his whole head into the water and came 
up shaking the sparkling drops from his face and 
hair like a Newfoundland pup emerging from a 
bath. A very different Peter, indeed, this man, from 
the bored, lackadaisical, weary individual whom 
Daphne had discovered not so long ago, playing 
cabbage under his pine tree. 

Daphne was, however, not noticing Peter at the 



282 PETER S BEST SELLER 


moment. Her eyes and her mind were travelling 
down the road, where just around the bend was the 
house whose threshold she had never crossed, though 
her thoughts had often journeyed thither wistfully 
for her mother’s sake. It gave her a queer, uncanny 
feeling that of all the points at which she and Peter 
might have emerged from the wood on the remote 
borders of Danversville, they had come out only a 
few rods from the old Keene mansion, which, had 
it not been for her grandfather’s stiff-necked pride, 
would have been her own home. 

In a moment Peter joined her and in silence they 
rounded the turn and descended the slope from 
which the stately double row of maples was clearly 
visible and a portion of the white house glimmered 
through them. 

“Bit early for a first call,” murmured Peter as 
they reached the foot of the hill and paused at the 
driveway which led up to the white house. “Still 
we’ll chance it. Hello! At least there is somebody 
at home. There is smoke coming out of the chim¬ 
ney. Want to wait here while I reconnoiter ?” he 
turned to ask his companion. 

Daphne shook her head decidedly. She had no 
mind to be left out of this particular reconnoitering 
expedition. 

“The Lord is with us. There is somebody patrol¬ 
ling the porch,’' announced Peter as they neared the 
house. “If it be Cousin Paul, he is an early riser. 
I’ll say that for him. It can’t be six yet.” 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


283 


Coming nearer they could see that the slightly 
built man who was nervously pacing up and down 
the porch was of an ugly, sickly yellow complexion. 
His eyes, which suddenly turned sharply upon them, 
were abnormally brilliant, burning like live coals 
from their sunken sockets. To Peter’s experienced 
eyes he was a man plainly marked for death and 
that at no distant date. If it was Paul Clement, his 
course was about run and an evil course it had been, 
thought Peter, judging from his looks. 

The man paused in his fretful march and eyed 
the newcomers, at first with suspicious irritability, 
then, as he beheld Daphne, with a kind of involun¬ 
tary interest as if an old, half charred log were to 
burst forth for a moment into heat and flame, 
though it would soon be nothing but blackened 
ashes. 

“You are up early, friends,” he said in a husky, 
attenuated voice which was anything but pleasant 
to hear. “Can’t you sleep either? What do you 
want here ?” 

Peter explained briefly their predicament and the 
need of the moment. 

Again the sharp, piercing black eyes sought the 
girl’s face with an evil leer on his own that made 
Peter’s strong, right arm itch to fly out in his 
direction. 

“Lost in a strip of woods a mile wide—had to 
spend the night there—alone—you two!” he laughed 
shrilly—a laugh which was a kind of devil’s cackle 



284 PETER S BEST SELLER 


rather than the evidence of true mirth. “That is 
a good one, upon my word! What will Danversville 
say to that? What won’t it say?” He cackled again 
maliciously. Then all at once the mockery died out 
of his face leaving in its place something like fear, 
as he studied Daphne’s face again. “For God’s 
sake, who are you?” he demanded harshly. “You 
look like Ruth Keene. But you can’t be. Ruth 
was dead years ago. Unless you are a ghost come 
here to torment and reproach me!” he muttered. 
“A damned ghost!’’ 

“I am not a ghost,” said Daphne. “I am Ruth 
Keene’s daughter, Daphne Joyce, and you, I think, 
must be Paul Clement.” 

“Paul Clement is right, Cousin Paul!” The 
sneer came back to his lips now he was assured that 
Daphne was no ghost out of the past. “What have 
you got to say to that?” he flung out harshly at 
Daphne. 

“What should I say except—shan’t we shake 
hands, Cousin Paul? After all we are cousins 
though we’ve never met before.” 

Daphne held out her hand. She was very sorry 
for the man. He was manifestly ill and unhappy, 
scarcely in his right mind, she thought. Moreover 
the sense of kinship was strong upon her. This 
man’s mother and her own grandmother had been 
sisters. In a strange, irrational way, the girl felt 
as if she, rather than he, were at home, that it was 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


285 


she who owed him hospitality instead of the other 
way about. 

He snatched at the proffered hand avidly, a flush 
warming his parchment yellow cheeks. His touch 
was clammily cold and yet it burned too. Daphne 
hated it, felt actually contaminated by it but she did 
not shrink or draw away. She was too sorry for 
Paul Clement to dare to hurt him even by a quiver 
of repugnance. 

“Cool and clean!” he muttered. “Clean and 
cool!” It was almost a sort of chant upon his lips. 
“I haven’t touched a hand like that since I can re¬ 
member—maybe not since Lucy’s. The others were 
hot, hot and unclean, like mine.” 

Daphne drew away her hand. She thought he 
was talking deliriously. Poor fellow! He must 
really be very ill. There was deep compassion in 
her clear, young eyes. 

Paul Clement’s gaze strayed to Peter Loomis, 
standing by, grimly witnessing a scene he had scant 
liking for. It was poison to see the man touch 
Daphne with his evil hand, his evil eyes, his evil 
mind, his evil memories. Peter had to make him¬ 
self remember sternly that he was only a poor, sick 
man, hardly accountable. 

“You two are in the devil of a fix,” said Paul 
Clement, probably sensing Peter’s animosity and 
maliciously seeking to add to it. “You may be as 
innocent as the Virgin Mary but they’ll never believe 
it—never. You had better stop at a parson’s on the 



286 PETER S BEST SELLER 


way back and get the knot tied. I forgot. Bob 
Keene’s a parson. He can do the business, keep it 
all in the family,” he sneered. 

Daphne’s cheeks flamed. If the earth had opened 
to swallow her up at the moment she would have 
been thankful. Peter reminded his temporary host 
curtly that they had come neither for his counsel 
nor comment. They had come solely as a matter 
of business to borrow or hire a conveyance of some 
kind if possible, to get them back to town at once. 
If he could not accommodate them would he kindly 
say so at once and let them seek elsewhere? 

“Not so fast, my friend,” shrugged Paul Clement. 
“I shall be honored to have my poor car used by my 
beautiful cousin Daphne.” He bowed low to the 
scarlet-cheeked Daphne. “I will order it brought 
round at once. In the meantime will you not still 
further honor me by partaking of breakfast under 
my roof? It will be ready by this time. I never 
sleep at night so it always served early.” 

Daphne thanked him but asked to be excused from 
the breakfast as she wanted to get home at the 
earliest possible moment. And might she use the 
telephone if there was one, so as to set her relatives’ 
minds at rest? 

Paul indicated the location of the telephone in 
the hall, gave orders to a Japanese boy, who seemed 
to appear by magic from somewhere, to have the 
car brought to the door, then returned to the porch 
and Peter. 



IN STRANGE PLACES 287 


“You needn’t grudge me a moment’s happiness,” 
he said. “It is months since I’ve touched a woman’s 
hand. I am surrounded by men servants only. I 
have cut out all the lure of the flesh—drink—women 
—all the rest of it. I am here to die—to die! Do 
you get that, man? By next month, next week, by 
tomorrow even, I’ll be dead—worm fodder—rot¬ 
ting flesh'—nothing* more. Is it strange that I 
snatch at such flashes of pleasure as come my way? 
They aren’t so many, I assure you. You hated to 
have me touch her hand just now. I don’t know 
that I blame you. But you didn’t understand. 
There was nothing in it to hate—only something to 
pity. When her hand was in mine, I felt as if an 
angel’s wings had brushed past me, as if there were 
healing and salvation in the touch. Man, I could 
have grovelled on the boards at her feet, kissed the 
hem of her garment for her beautiful compassion to 
me—unworthy—a miserable sinner.” 

Peter’s antagonism vanished. He realized that 
this was a sick soul as well as a sick body before 
him, a smirched and blackened soul but one which, 
through everything, had retained an almost super¬ 
stitious reverence for the pure and good. He was 
as sorry for the man as Daphne herself was, per¬ 
haps more sorry, understanding more. He would 
gladly have helped the other if he could. 

“I am vile and unclean—rotten through and 
through,” the man muttered on. “I would have been 
different though if the girl I loved had lived. She 



288 PETER S BEST SELLER 


died and I never cared much what happened to me 
after that. And my mother sold my soul to the 
devil anyway for old Bob Keene’s money. He 
would have made up with young Bob at the end if 
she would have let him. She wouldn’t. She wanted 
the whole thing for me. She got it and it’s been a 
damned curse from then to now. That is what I 
am. Cursed! Cursed!” he babbled. Then as 
Daphne’s returning footsteps sounded, he added in 
a hoarse whisper, “Sh, sh! Not a word to the girl. 
She’ll know in time—when I am dead. I’ll fix it. 
It will be all right.” 

Daphne stepped out on the porch and at the same 
moment Paul Clement's car, like a splendid, great 
gray beast, came purring up the driveway, stopped 
before the steps. 

“Good-bye,” said Daphne. “Thank you for your 
kindness. I am so sorry you are sick. I should like 
to bring Uncle Robert to see you if I may. Would 
you like to have him come?” 

Paul stared at her. 

“Uncle Robert? You mean Bob Keene—the par¬ 
son ? Do you think he would come to see me—here, 
in this house?” 

“Of course he would, if you would care to have 
him. It isn’t your fault Grandfather left the place 
to you instead of to him. But even if it were, I am 
sure it would make no difference. There isn’t the 
faintest spark of hate or uncharitableness in Uncle 
Robert’s whole make-up. He is more like Christ 




289 


IN STRANGE PLACES 

than anybody I ever knew or ever expect to know. 
Please let him come. I am sure it would do you 
good before you-” She broke off. 

“Before I die,” he completed for her. “Perhaps 
it would. Bring him, Cousin Daphne, if he will 
come, and come yourself, if you will. But remem¬ 
ber there isn’t much time. I wonder-” 

“Well?” encouraged Daphne. “Is there anything 
I can do for you before I go?” 

“There is, if you would be willing to do it,” he 
he told her. “Pve heard that you sing like an angel. 
Would you sing to me—just one song—before you 
go? It—it may be too late after today.” 

Daphne’s eyes sought Peter’s consent. He nodded 
gravely. Far be it from him to bar the other man 
from whatever solace Daphne’s presence or music 
could give him. 

The queerly assorted little procession entered the 
house and passed into the parlor which had beheld 
many strange and sharply contrasting scenes in its 
time. It was the room in which for long years old 
Robert Keene had been in the habit of assembling 
his household for family prayers every evening— 
his servants, his meek, mouse-like wife, his gentle 
son, Robert, his beautiful, high-spirited, young 
daughter, Ruth; it was the same room which had, 
after his death, been the scene of crazy revelry when 
Paul Clement brought down to the old house, to the 
scandalization of the town, his reckless crew of 






290 PETER S REST SELLER 


loose-lived men and women, whose society he fre¬ 
quented to his ill advantage. 

Here, too, it was that old Robert had pointed the 
door to his daughter, telling her that if she chose to 
go to the “papist singer” against his will, she was 
henceforth no daughter of his and need never cross 
his threshold again as long as she lived. Here, too, 
it was, a few years later, that the broken old man 
received the word of Ruth’s death in the far-away 
land to which she had fled with her lover-husband 
and, in secret, shed tears bitter as wormwood over 
the news, though even then he was on the verge of 
the final estrangement from his well-beloved son, 
Robert, because the latter, gentle as he was, would 
not permit the other man to control his conscience 
and insisted on going, against his father’s orders, to 
get Ruth’s child to make her as his own. 

Paul opened the old rosewood piano which had 
been Daphne’s mother’s. Daphne sat down and let 
her fingers wander over the yellow keys in tentative 
chords. 

She turned to Peter. 

“Open the shutters a little, won’t you please, 
Peter?” she asked. “I can’t see.” 

Peter did as he was requested and through the 
opened shutter came a sudden infusion of light 
which, crossing the dim room in a broad, slantwise 
bar, ended on the girl’s bowed head, making her 
look like a new version of Saint Cecilia, as she bent 
over the instrument. 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


291 


“What shall I sing?” she asked of Paul, who had 
slipped with a weary sigh into the chair beside her, 
while Peter still stood almost as if he were on guard 
at her other side. 

“What you will. Or, no. Since I mustn’t keep 
you and it is to be only one song, make it a hymn. 
It’s queer, but I’ve always liked hymns best. There 
is one about light. What was it? Ah, I know. 
‘Lead, Kindly Light.’ That was it. Will you sing 
that for me, Daphne? I’d like to hear it.” 

Peter, listening, wondered and pitied. Strange 
that a man like this should have “always liked 
hymns best,” that he should ask for one now, one 
“about light.” A freak of random, flaccid senti¬ 
mentality, perhaps. But Peter fancied it was more 
than that, perhaps a sign of thwarted possibilities 
for better things striving within him and never 
destroyed. Many times Peter had seen water lilies 
growing out of slime, a star reflected in a mud 
puddle. 

And then with the kindly light falling upon her 
hair and her face, Daphne began to sing, her voice 
breaking the hush of the somber room as a sky¬ 
lark’s soaring sunward might startle the gray dawn. 

By the time she had reached the second stanza— 

“I loved to choose and see my path but now 
Lead thou, me on. 

I loved the garish day and spite of fears, 

Pride ruled my will; 

Remember not past years!” 



292 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


the tears were streaming unchecked down the sick 
man’s face. 

“O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent till 
The night is gone.” 

The tears welled very close to the surface in 
Daphne’s own eyes as she felt rather than saw the 
man’s deep emotion. 

“And with the morn, those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved, long since and lost awhile.” 

The song ended, quivered off to silence. Daphne 
rose and paused a moment beside her cousin, her 
eyes very pitiful. He looked up. 

“Thank you,” he said huskily. “There was a 
girl once—a little white saint of a girl, who used 
to sing that song—a girl that loved me. She—she 
died. I didn’t ever think I’d see her again. I wasn’t 
worthy. But just now as you sang, it came to me 
that perhaps she would be waiting somewhere for 
me after all. Maybe she understands—maybe she’ll 
tell God that I would have been different if He 
hadn’t taken her when I needed her so. Maybe it is 
just I that was dost awhile,’ not she.” 

Obeying a sudden impulse Daphne stooped and 
dropped a kiss upon the man’s fevered cheek. 

“For Lucy,” she said softly. “I think she will 
be waiting, Paul, just as I am sure my mother will 
be waiting for me—because they loved us.” 

A moment later the good-bye had been spoken and 



IN STRANGE PLACES 


293 


Daphne nestled with a tired sigh into a corner of 
Paul Clement's big car. She shut her eyes and let 
Peter's hand close over hers unrebuked. She had 
had enough of adventure for the moment and craved 
only rest. 



CHAPTER XIV 


AFTERMATH 

The great, purring, gray car drew up before the 
door of the parsonage. Robert and Lucinda, who 
had been listening with strained ears for its coming 
ever since Daphne’s amazing but reassuring message 
had come over the wire, hastened to the hall, char¬ 
acteristically enough, he from his study and his 
morning Bible reading, she, from the kitchen and 
the baking of “johnny cake.'’ 

Now that her fears were at least partially at ease, 
Mrs. Lucinda was inclined to renew her severity 
toward the culprits. Whoever heard of anybody 
being so silly as to lose a canoe and to get them¬ 
selves lost also into the bargain? It was absurd, 
inexcusable. Yet, a moment later when Daphne’s 
arms were around her neck, Daphne’s tears bedewing 
her face, Daphne who never cried no matter what 
happened, the severity melted so far as her niece 
was concerned, though Peter Loomis was still 
reserved for judgment. 

“There, there, child!” she soothed, patting 

Daphne’s hair. “Everything’s all right now. 

You’re home. I have a hot bath all drawn for 

you. Just you go up and pop into it, and when 

294 


AFTERMATH 


295 


you are through, tuck yourself up in bed and I’ll 
bring your breakfast. You are all worn out and 
no wonder.” v 

Daphne fled up the stairs. Mrs. Lucinda turned 
and surveyed Peter Loomis with eyes which seemed 
to bore clean through him and come out on the 
other side. 

Peter met her challenging gaze straight. 

“Shoot if you must,” he invited. “It is no end 
of a mess we’ve gotten into and I know it as well 
as you do and am quite as sorry. Being sorry isn’t 
going to help much though, I know, if the gossip 
hornets begin to rage about Daphne’s head. I hope 
to Heaven nobody gets wind of our little adventure.” 

“Too late to hope for that,” grunted Mrs. Lu¬ 
cinda. “Mira’s probably already started on her 
rounds. No doubt but she saw you come. But 
never mind that. I am not worrying just now about 

the hornets. I want to know- You know what 

I want to know, Mr. Loomis.” 

Again Peter met the accusing eyes directly, 
gravely. 

“I know,” he answered. “Look at me, Mrs. 
Keene, look hard.” 

Aunt Lucinda looked—looked hard. 

“It is all right, on my honor. You don’t think 
I could look you straight in the face like this if—if 
I hadn’t taken the best care of Daphne that I knew 
how, do you?” 

A quiver passed over Mrs. Lucinda’s troubled 




296 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


face and she sighed—a sigh of relief and great 
contentment. 

“No, I don’t, Mr. Loomis,’' she said. “I believe 
you. Enough said. It was a mighty unfortunate 
accident but there isn’t any use in crying over spilt 
milk. It is done now and it can’t be undone. 
Daphne’s been canoeing with a good many different 
young men first and last, and though she never hap¬ 
pened to lose her canoe before, she might have and 
if it had to be, I would rather it were with you than 
any young man I know and I am sure Robert thinks 
as I do, don’t you, Robert?” 

“I certainly do.” By way of corroboration of his 
statement the Reverend Robert held out his hand to 
Peter who took it and at the same moment extended 
his other hand to Mrs. Lucinda. For a moment 
they stood thus as if in some triangular ceremonial 
Then Mrs. Lucinda broke away sniffing. 

“My sakes! The johnny cake’s burning!” she 
ejaculated and fled kitchenward upon the instant. 

The two men smiled at each other with the deep, 
silent understanding of their sex. 

Meanwhile the hornets were preparing to swarm. 
As Mrs. Keene had shrewdly conjectured, her 
neighbor had seen Peter and Daphne arrive in the 
unfamiliar car and was agog with excitement and 
curiosity as to the meaning of the strange and scan¬ 
dalous behavior of Daphne and the Loomis man. 
Where had they been all night? Why were they 
coming home at all after such an outrageous and 



AFTERMATH 


297 


shocking performance? Whose car was it that had 
brought them? 

With these unanswerable questions seething in her 
brain and burning on her tongue, Mira made as 
much haste as was decent in getting over to the 
parsonage under the pretext of borrowing some 
raisins for use in the oatmeal cookies. 

Daphne was invisible but Mrs. Lucinda was in 
the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes. She was 
out of raisins and said so somewhat curtly, a curt¬ 
ness which did not encourage unnecessary lingering 
upon her premises. But Mira lingered for all that 
like a dog who has tasted fresh chicken and stands 
near the coop licking his chops. 

“I saw Daphne coming in just now with Mr. 
Loomis. I didn’t seem to know the car. Whose 
was it?” Thus the questions which were all but 
choking the questioner began to emit themselves in 
spite of Mrs. Keene’s lack of responsiveness. 

Mira was informed that the car was the car of 
Paul Clement, Robert’s cousin, over at the old 
Keene place. 

Here was a new thriller. Everybody knew that 
Paul Clement and Robert Keene hadn’t spoken to 
each other for years, not since the old man died and 
left all his property to Paul instead of to Robert. 
Everybody knew, too, that Paul Clement was a 
waster and a profligate though he had been a nice 
boy once, and engaged to pretty Lucy Damon—the 
Damon girl that died. Anyway he wasn’t nice now. 




298 PETER S REST SELLER 


There were all sorts of stories current about his 
wildness, the scandalous orgies that were carried on 
at the old Keene house under his sponsorship, the 
flaunting immorality of his relations with various 
women, particularly with the French dancer who, it 
was said, clung to him like a leech for his money 
though she openly despised him. In short, Paul 
Clement was not the kind of man in whose car a 
decent girl would ride, cousin or no. Moreover, 
what under the canopy was Daphne doing in the car 
with Peter Loomis? And where had they spent the 
night? That was the thing. 

Seeing the questions trembling on her neighbor’s 
lips, it was on the tip of Mrs. Lucinda’s own tongue 
to make up a plausible story of how her niece had 
happened to find herself near her cousin’s house and, 
having lost her canoe, had spent the night at her 
mother’s old home, as who had a better right ? But 
fortunately or unfortunately, the Reverend Robert 
arrived on the scene at the moment. Lucinda would 
far rather have uttered a falsehood in the presence 
of the Lord than in the presence of Robert. The 
Lord might be expected to understand and overlook 
a little twist of the truth for a good cause, but 
Robert never. He hated a lie above all things. Not 
even to save Daphne from the hornets, could her 
aunt drive herself to speak one in his hearing. In¬ 
stead she grimly related in the briefest form, shorn 
of all embellishments and comments, the facts as 
they were, knowing that in Mira’s hands they would 



AFTERMATH 


f 


299 


all too speedily accumulate enough embellishments 
and comments to put Daphne in a sorry plight. But 
there was no help for it. The thing had to run its 
course now like a fever until it abated and a new 
sensation took its place among the gossip mongers. 

And run it did. Within an hour, the tale of 
Daphne Joyce’s escapade with the Loomis man was 
on half a hundred tongues and still spreading like a 
forest fire in a stiff breeze. 

Peter and Daphne were damned indeed, just as 
Daphne had prophesied. Only Daphne was damned 
double and treble what Peter was inasmuch as she 
was a woman and a native of Danversville whereas 
Peter, being a man and a stranger, might be ex¬ 
pected to behave outrageously in any case. Hadn't 
everybody said that Robert Keene would rue the day 
he ever took the man under his roof and let his niece 
run around with him so freely? Making hay, in¬ 
deed ! Anybody who wasn’t a natural born idiot 
would have seen through that blind the first day. 
Of course he had had his designs from the begin¬ 
ning. Everybody could see that, had seen it all 
along, everybody, it seemed, but the deluded parson 
and his wife. And now see what had happened! 

The story, in its travels and plus its accumulated 
embellishments and comments, reached Jimmy Dan¬ 
vers in his bank and made him quite literally sick 
for a moment. 

In spite of Angela’s undoubted charms and con¬ 
venient accessibility, Jimmy was not even yet recon- 




300 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


ciled to surrendering all idea of winning Daphne. 
Stung as he had been by her rebuff, he could not' 
quite realize that the thing was absolutely settled 
and done for forever. And meeting Daphne at the 
Inn the other night, dancing with her, finding her 
kind and friendly, had somehow fanned his hope to 
life again, though at the same time, seeing her with 
Peter had rubbed the wound raw, made him feel 
more and more ill used and more convinced than 
ever that Peter Loomis was little short of a black¬ 
guard. 

All day yesterday he had gone about in sulky, 
brooding silence, surrounding himself with a barrier 
of injured and suffering reserve, which neither 
Angela’s wistful advances or his mother's plaints 
could over-reach. 

And now came this new and overwhelming men¬ 
ace to his peace of mind. He was an essentially 
clean-minded youth and he did not for a moment 
believe that Daphne could have done anything actu¬ 
ally wrong, but he could not help seeing her conduct 
as violently injudicious. Moreover he did not see 
how anything could possibly redeem the situation for 
Daphne after this shocking misadventure of hers 
when public opinion was already captious of her 
conduct with the Loomis man. She would never be 
able to live down the scandal unless- 

And just here that “queer, dear, chivalrous” 
streak dormant in Jimmy Danvers sprang again to 
life. Who but himself could save Daphne, deliver 





AFTERMATH 


301 


her from slanderous tongues, right her in the eyes 
of the community? Married to James Danvers, Jr., 
who dared cast a slur on Daphne’s name or turn a 
cold shoulder upon her? Jimmy’s befogged misery 
of mind cleared, evaporated. He saw himself aris¬ 
ing, a pillar of strength to Daphne in her weakness. 
He would go to her, magnanimously overlooking her 
faithlessness, forbearing to reproach her for the 
folly of her conduct with the Loomis man, offer her, 
chastened and humbled, the shelter and protection 
of his name and manhood. Angela was forgotten. 
With the zeal of a Christian martyr going to the 
lions, he fled in spirit to Daphne. 

As soon as he could get away from the bank, his 
body followed the course of his spirit. His head 
high, his step firm and buoyant, his soul fired with 
a fine enthusiasm—mostly for himself—he marched 
to the parsonage. 

Daphne, herself, opened the door for him, a 
Daphne, cool and fresh and sweet as a flower in her 
crisp, pale blue organdy frock. She did not appear 
in the least chastened or humbled. Indeed she 
seemed to have even more poise than usual, far 
more than Jimmy was able to muster all of a sud¬ 
den. The contrast between what was and what he 
had conjured up in his fancy, was marked enough 
to be more than a little disconcerting. His chiv- 
alric ardor burned down a trifle like a guttering 
candle, his noble impulse felt suddenly a bit limp, 
like an unstarched cuff. Still he was not to be 



302 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


daunted so easily from his mission. He permitted 
himself to be ushered, not too enthusiastically, by 
his hostess into the sitting room. Once inside, the 
door safely closed behind them, he put out both 
hands and drew Daphne’s into them. 

“My poor darling!” he crooned. “I can’t tell you 
how sorry I am that this terrible thing had to happen 
to you. I believe it was all just as you said—an 
accident—and that everything was quite all right— 
oh, quite. At the same time, you can’t wonder that 
people are saying all sorts of unkind, untrue things. 
But we can stop their tongues in a moment. As 
my wife-” 

But by this time, Daphne had wrenched herself 
away from his hands and was staring at him as if 
she thought he might have gone suddenly crazy. 

“Good gracious, Jimmy! Whatever are you talk¬ 
ing about? I told you days and days ago that I 
wasn’t going to marry you. I thought that was 
definitely settled for good and all.” 

“But, Daphne, dear,” he pleaded, “all that was 
before this—this unfortunate thing happened. You 
don’t realize how serious it is—what they are saying. 
It is going to be very hard—impossible, in fact—to 
live it down unless—with the protection of my name 
—you see-” 

Jimmy floundered off ignominiously to silence, 
warned by the flash in Daphne’s eyes that he was 
making progress only in the wrong direction. 

“Stop right there, Jimmy Danvers,” she com- 





_AFTERMATH 303 

manded. “I suppose you don’t realize that you are 
insulting me. I haven’t anything to live down as 
you call it, though it is a horrid phrase and makes 
me ashamed even to say it.” 

“Well, but Daphne, if you will only listen,” 
pleaded Jimmy. 

“Well, I won’t listen—not to anything like that. 
You can do the listening yourself. Listen so hard 
I’ll never have to say it again. I wouldn’t marry 
you if you were the only man on earth. I don’t 
need the protection of your name or anybody’s. I 
am perfectly content to be Daphne Joyce forever. 
And if I did need any protecting I guess Uncle 
Robert could do it a million times better than you 
ever could, so there!” 

And then Daphne suddenly finding the tumult of 
her emotions too much for her, threw herself upon 
the couch, her head buried among the pillows. 

This, in turn, was too much for Jimmy. 

“Don’t cry, Daphne,” he begged. “I didn’t mean 

to hurt you. I just meant- Don’t you see it is 

because I love you, because I want to help you?” 

Daphne lifted her head and smiled a wan, penitent, 
little smile at the speaker. 

“Oh, I know, Jimmy,” she relented. “I was 
horrid. I am sorry. You meant to be kind I know 
and you do love me—in a way. Really, it is dear 
of you to ask me to marry you, especially as you do 
feel, way down in your heart, that I am disgraced 
for life because I happened to spend the night alone 





304 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


in the woods with Peter Loomis. But, Jimmy, I 
am not disgraced. I couldn’t be unless I had done 
something wrong myself and I haven’t nor has 
Peter. I don’t care what people think. If they have 
evil minds let ’em have evil thoughts if they must. 
But Peter——” 

The mention of the other man’s name twice in a 
breath, almost, set Jimmy on a new tack. 

“Daphne!” he interrupted. “Is he going to 
marry you?” 

Fire flashed again in Daphne’s eyes at that, drying 
the mist that her tears had left. 

“Am I going to marry him, you mean,” she cor¬ 
rected hotly. “No, I am not. I am not going to 
marry any one. Try to get that into your head, 
Jimmy.” 

“Well, I say he is a damned cad if he doesn’t 
marry you after compromising you like that. By 
Heaven, he shall marry you. I’ll make him.” And 
in his violence of righteous determination, young 
Mr. Danvers brought his fist down upon the table 
with a force that set the lamp shade quivering as if 
in an attack of ague. 

“Spare the furniture and your own emotions, Mr. 
Danvers.” Peter’s slow drawl broke into the con¬ 
versation as he stood on the threshold eyeing Jimmy 
somewhat as a mastiff might have eyed a chow. “I 
have every desire in the world to marry Miss Joyce 
if she will do me the honor. For the fifth time, 
Daphne—will you marry me?” 




AFTERMATH 


305 


Daphne was standing now between the two men. 
Her cheeks were aflame, her eyes flashed stormy 
lights, her chin quivered, ever so little. Her pride 
was outraged beyond limits of endurance. 

“No, I will not. I am sick to death of both of 
you. I hope I’ll never see either of you again as 
long as I live. And I won’t be married out of pity, 
nor for any reason—except—the real reason.” 

And charging past Peter in the doorway, Daphne 
vanished in the hall. They heard her flying foot¬ 
steps mounting the stairs. The two men stared at 
each other, both a little shamefaced, and foolish 
looking. 

“Between us, Mr. Danvers,” remarked Peter, “we 
seem to have rather thoroughly messed things up. 
The Lord knows whether she’ll ever forgive either 
of us. If you will excuse me, I will leave you as I 
have to pack my trunk.” 

Jimmy stared dazedly at Peter. 

“Pack your trunk! You are going away?” he 
gasped. 

“Your deduction is entirely correct,” agreed Peter 
politely and, bidding young Mr. Danvers good after¬ 
noon, he departed. 

Jimmy, still dazed, looking after Peter, stood 
rooted to the spot a moment, then gathering up his 
scattered wits, he, too, passed out into the hall, out 
the door into the street. 

He was at last thoroughly convinced that Daphne 
Joyce did not wish to marry him, preferred even to 



306 PETER S BEST SELLER 


be the talk of the town rather than be his wife. It 
was hard to swallow but it was evidently the true 
state of the case. At least it was some consolation 
to know that the Loomis man wasn’t having any 
luck either. Daphne certainly had not spared him 
in the scathe of her wrath. 

If winning even a pardoning word from Daphne, 
not to mention an acceptance of his proffer of mar¬ 
riage, constituted luck, Peter was certainly out of 
it that day. Daphne did not come down to supper. 
She was tired and had gone to bed her aunt said, 
in delivering to Peter her niece’s formal farewells 
and best wishes for the success of his book. 

“I am to infer that she doesn’t want to see me 
before I go?” questioned Peter meditatively. 

“So I judge,” returned Mrs. Lucinda with a 
faintly malicious twinkle in her eyes. “Girls are 
queer cattle, Mr. Loomis, as no doubt you know 
quite as well as I do. When Daphne makes up her 
mind, few things can change it. If you really care 
about her friendship I advise you not to try to see 
her tonight. May I ask what you did to her? She 
seemed remarkably angry when she came upstairs 
this afternoon, or rather blew up, as if a cyclone 
had whirled her.” 

“Nothing but ask her to marry me, at what was, 
it seemed, a peculiarly inopportune moment. Mr. 
Danvers was at it again, too. Between us we 
spilled all the beans.” 

Mrs. Lucinda chuckled. So that was the way of 



AFTERMATH 


307 


it. For her part she was not sorry it was turning 
out so, with both young men in high disfavor. She 
was not at all in a hurry to see her niece married to 
any man. She hadn’t any too good opinion of the 
sex with the exception of Robert, who was mani¬ 
festly different from the rest of the tribe. 

And much as she personally liked Peter Loomis, 
she speeded his going tonight with real relief, albeit 
tactfully concealed. She had an uneasy suspicion 
that, though her niece had refused to marry Peter, 
it did not necessarily mean that she was not in the 
least interested in him. Girls, like dreams, not in¬ 
frequently go by contraries she knew and Peter, for 
all his queerness, had his undeniable charms. In 
fact, he had a way with him and when a man had 
a way with him, there was no telling what might 
happen. On the whole it was all for the best that he 
had gone without seeing Daphne again. 

So Peter vanished from Danversville on Saturday 
night and Sunday morning Daphne woke to a new 
and different world, left to take up the dropped 
stitches of life’s knitting as best she might. 

She had told Jimmy fiercely that she didn’t care 
what people said. But she did care. She had to. 
She went to church that morning and sat in the 
choir as usual, her pretty head held proud and high, 
a brave smile on her lips. But it was an ordeal for 
all that, an ordeal which she was to face for many 
days. She began to realize that. Sensitively aware 
of pursed lips and whispering behind her back, of 



308 PETER’S REST SELLER 


cuts direct from some of the more narrow-minded 
and Puritanical, of a general enveloping atmosphere 
of disapproval and suspicion, she felt the sting of 
their injustice and cruelty, resented with all her fiery 
young spirit the judgment wherewith she was 
judged. And yet, in the bottom of her heart, some¬ 
how she understood their attitude. They were the 
“judgment people” of the world and the “judgment 
people” were needed “for ballast” as Peter said. If 
it were not for them, the others, the tolerant, under¬ 
standing people, might over-step bounds and, not 
judging others, they might forget even to judge 
themselves. There were some things that were 
much clearer in Daphne’s mind since she spent that 
night in the woods with Peter and dreamed his 
lover’s kisses. 

As for Peter, she meant to forget him as speedily 
as possible. She came to this sage conclusion right 
in the midst of Uncle Robert’s prayer. If he had 
really cared, he wouldn’t have taken that over¬ 
wrought, hysterical outburst of wrath of hers as a 
final rebuff, he wouldn’t have been content to go 
away without seeing her again, he wouldn’t have 
accepted a vicarious good-bye. Peter knew well 
enough how to have his way when he wanted it. 
It was because he did not want it that he had gone 
away so promptly and meekly. No doubt he was 
thankful to get away so easily, not to have his final 
proposal taken any more seriously than the others 
had been taken. Peter was not only precarious, he 



_ AFTERMATH 309 

was a coward. He ran away even from love, 
wouldn’t face the music. 

No, perhaps that wasn’t fair. He had faced the 
music yesterday afternoon, asked her to marry him 
solemnly enough, but that was because he was a 
gentleman and couldn’t behave any other way with 
Jimmy making such an absurd scene with his melo- 
dramatics. Even so, he had been careful not to 
commit himself. He hadn’t said he loved her. 

He needn’t think he could put it on the ground of 
a big sacrifice like his book hero either. If he didn’t 
tell her he cared, it was because he didn’t trust his 
caring to last, perhaps because he already felt it 
waning. He and his Beginnings were like a moon 
that waxed from the slim, little crescent up to the 
full round orb and then paled and dwindled again 
until it was nothing but a dim ghost of itself. That 
was the way it had been with Marian. It was the 
way—no doubt—it was beginning to be with her— 
Daphne. 

Well, that was the way it should be with her. 
She, too, would be a moon and let love, having 
waxed, wane and pale into a meaningless shadow 
of itself. The moon never stayed at full, neither 
did the tide. There was always the ebb. She would 
strike Peter Loomis from her heart and mind. 

And yet, in spite of her stern determination to 
pluck love and Peter out of her life, Daphne had a 
disconcerting conviction that it wasn’t going to be 
so easy to accomplish. Peter was maddeningly per- 





310 PETER S REST SELLER 


vasive. The memory of his ways, his words, his 
magical smile—would it ever be washed away as the 
new tide washes away the footprints upon the shore ? 
She was a little afraid not. She caught herself even 
now wondering if Peter would write to her, if there 
would be a letter tomorrow—next day. And then 

she frowned in self-disapproval and hastened to find 

\ 

her place in the hymn book. 

And the next day there was a letter from Peter 
but it wasn’t addressed to Daphne at all. It came 
to her aunt, a courteous and pleasant note of thanks 
to them all with “greetings to Daphne.” That was 
all. And there were no more letters. Peter had 
vanished as completely as snow, falling on the sur¬ 
face of the ocean, is swallowed up. 

But there were other things to think of besides 
Peter. Primarily there was Paul Clement who had 
appealed so deeply to Daphne’s compassion. She 
and her uncle agreed on Sunday that on the next 
day they would go to see him. In making the sug¬ 
gestion, Daphne surprised a curious look of hesita¬ 
tion and doubt upon her uncle’s face. 

“Why, Uncle Robert, you don't bear him any 
grudge, do you?” she challenged, puzzled at his 
expression. “I told him you didn’t.” 

“Not the least in the world, child. You were 
quite right to tell him that. All the same it won’t be 
exactly easy to go there again—to remember the last 
time I was there.” 



AFTERMATH 


311 


“What happened the last time you were there?” 
asked Daphne. 

“My father was dying. My letters to him were 
never answered. But somehow I couldn’t stand it 
to stay away, to let him pass out without trying to 
have an understanding. It seemed to me I had to 
try again to get him to see me. I went. I was told 
that he would not see me, that he had no son, his son 
died years ago. It hurt, Daphne. It hurts still to¬ 
day remembering. For I loved him, loved him tre¬ 
mendously in spite of all his faults, his harshness 
and his tyranny. I had to go against him. I 
couldn’t let him own me body and soul but I was 
always sorry with all my heart that I had to hurt 
him so. I never bore him any ill will. With him it 
was different. He wouldn’t let himself soften. He 
cherished the grudge. But I have always had a 
feeling that he wanted me though he wouldn’t let 
himself admit it. Poor father! A pride like that 
is a terrible thing. I would not have believed he 
could have kept it alive to the end as he did. But 
all this has nothing to do with poor Paul. Tomor¬ 
row we will go to see him.” 

But God disposes. On the morrow they found 
Paul Clement dead, with the early morning sunshine 
on his face and Lucy’s picture in his hand. 

And the next day, like a message from the other 
world, came a letter from Paul to Robert Keene, a 
letter that was dated on that very Sunday afternoon 
when Daphne and her uncle were speaking of him 




312 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


and of the stern old man who had died hugging his 
pride and bitterness to his bosom as his son sadly 
believed. 

¥ 

“Perhaps, you do not know,” it ran, “that from 
the moment my mother came to keep house for your 
father after your mother’s death, she had one dom¬ 
inating purpose, to so work upon Uncle Robert that 
he would make me, her penniless young rake of a 
son, co-sharer with you and Ruth in his estate. 
Ruth’s elopement and death and your own subse¬ 
quent estrangement from your father, played into 
her hands. She determined then to make me the 
sole heir. She devoted her life to fanning your 
father’s resentment against you so that there could 
be no hope of a reconciliation between you. When 
he showed signs of weakening, she persistently rein¬ 
forced his old grudge, poisoned his mind by indirect 
words and methods and reminded him that he had 
sworn that neither you nor Ruth’s child should have 
a penny of his money. She was almost ready to die 
of relief when at last he made a will in my sole favor. 
Even then she did not dare die, though she had a 
dangerous heart leakage, until he was dead himself, 
lest at the last moment he change his mind. 

“Finally he fell ill—his last sickness. It was a 
pitiful thing to hear him babbling about you and 
Ruth and the child, imploring you to forgive his mad 
injustice and stubborn pride, to come to him before 
he died. It frightened me. More than once, I 
begged my mother to send for you but she scoffed 
at what she called my weakness. Was it for this 
she had worked and sacrificed so much ? That some¬ 
body else should gain all in the end? You wrote 
asking to be allowed to see him. He never got the 
letters. My mother burned them. You came in 
person and were turned away from the door with a 



AFTERMATH 


313 


cruel message. He never knew you were there. He 
was crying for you like a child even at the moment 
when you went down the steps. He died the next 
day. In a month my mother was dead, too. There 
was no need of her trying to hang on any more. 
She had achieved her goal. 

“It is not a pretty story for a man to relate about 
his own mother. It isn’t an easy story to tell. But 
it is your right to hear it. Remember though, it 
was for me and not for herself that she sinned. She 
was not personally avaricious nor greedy. It was a 
queer, perverted passion that actuated her from 
beginning to end. I have often wondered if she 
knows what a curse the money was to me, how it 
dragged me down, down, down, to the lowest depths 
of degradation and vice. Sometimes I’ve wondered 
if the Hell you preachers talk about isn’t simply a 
grand stand from which we are condemned to watch 
the results of our own sins and blunders working on 
after we are dead and powerless to undo the harm 
we have done. And Heaven—well, according to 
that it must be a similar lookout tower from which 
we watch our good deeds blossom and fruit. I’m 
afraid I shan’t get a ticket of admittance to that 
watch tower, however. It would have been a dif¬ 
ferent story, maybe, if • Lucy hadn’t died. You 
remember Lucy? We called her Santa Lucia, she 
was such a sweet little saint. She was the only good 
woman that ever loved me. The love of the others 
was damnation. 

“I’m dying now, Bob. They tell me the end may 
come any day, any hour. It doesn’t matter much to 
me when it comes. I’m ready at last. I’ve been 
ready—since yesterday. I didn’t mean to tell you 
all this. I didn’t mean to give you back the money. 
I always hated you because I wronged you. I meant 
to leave the money—and it’s three times what your 
father left since I dabbled in lucky oil—to a woman, 



314 PETER S REST SELLER 


a vampire who has played the devil with me for 
years, and drained me, purse, body and spirit, for 
her own ends, never because she cared for me. She 
doesn’t need it, has no claim on me for it, but I was 
going to give it to her for all that, for want of any¬ 
body else and to keep you from getting it as my 
next of kin. 

“But, yesterday, Bob, Daphne came, Ruth’s 
daughter, gave me her hand, sang to me and prom¬ 
ised to bring you to see me, you, who she said, was 
more like Christ than any one she knew. I didn’t 
believe in God before that but afterward I couldn’t 
help feeling that only a God could have sent her. 
It gave me a new slant on things, set me to feeling 
that perhaps all wasn’t lost even now, perhaps I’d 
stand a chance of seeing Lucy again if, before I 
went, I tried to undo some of the wrong my mother 
and I had done to you and Daphne. I sent for a 
lawyer, made a new will. It’s all yours and hers 
now, including the old place—or will be in a day or 
two—a week at most. Forgive me if you can, Bob, 
and think as kindly as you can of me. Give my 
love to Daphne. Tell her I thank her especially for 
that kiss in Lucy’s name. It is growing dark. Good 
night, Bob. Pray for me if you will. I need it.” 

% 

So the web of destiny was spun in warp and woof 
of life and death. Because Peter and Daphne lost 
their way in the woods and came out on the yellow 
pike at one point rather than another, the one rank¬ 
ling hurt of Robert Keene’s life was healed and a 
dying man was led to see light at the eleventh hour. 

“What will you do with so much money?” asked 
Daphne wonderingly, a few days later when the 
lawyer who had been going over Paul Clement’s 



AFTERMATH 


315 


will with them had finally left, leaving behind him 
the knowledge that both Daphne and her uncle were 
inheriting a not inconsiderable fortune, even divided 
between them, a larger estate for each than old Rob¬ 
ert Keene had left in all. The “lucky oil” had 
proved a wonderful multiplier. Fast as Paul Clem¬ 
ent had spent money, faster still it had poured in. 

Robert Keene smiled gently at the question. 

“Send it about my Father’s business, my dear,” 
he made answer. “I was never one to despise 
money. It is only the too great love of it that is the 
root of all evil as it proved in poor Aunt Sarah’s 
case. Money itself is good for the good it can do. 
It is a great responsibility however. I pray God 
that He will help me render a good stewardship.” 

But Daphne looked dubious. She was young and 
youth lives very much in the here and now of things. 
She thought even a saint like Uncle Robert might 
be permitted a little fling in worldliness under the 
circumstances. 

“But won’t you do anything with it—just for 
yourself?” she probed. 

Again he smiled, a deep tenderness shining in his 
fine, tired eyes. 

“Oh, yes, Daphne. Your aunt and I are going 
to gratify the dream of a lifetime. We are going 
to turn the old place into a children’s home. We are 
going to gather together as many of the poor little 
waifs and strays of the world as it will hold, young- 
old children, who have never known love or laugh- 



316 PETER S BEST SELLER 


ter, never played in the sunshine and picked 
buttercups. We are going to try, with God’s help, 
to make them healthy and happy and good, give them 
the chance they might not otherwise have had. It 
is a wonderful thing for Lucinda and me. We can 
hardly sleep nights for thinking and planning about 
it. It makes us so happy, so grateful to Paul.” 

Truly indeed, a good Saint Anthony if there ever 
was one! Daphne’s eyes grew misty. Dear Uncle 
Robert! She was so happy for him and Aunt 
Lucinda, too. How much the “mothering job” 
would mean to the latter, how far it would go to 
make up for the childlessness which had been the 
one great disappointment of her busy, contented, 
useful life! Daphne was glad, too, that just as they 
had lost so much for her sake, now they were getting 
it all, even her grandfather’s love, back again 
through her. 

She came over and kissed her uncle and dropping 
on the arm of his chair ran her slim fingers through 
his hair with loving, daughterly touch. 

“You are wonderful, dear—you and Aunt Lu¬ 
cinda,” she said. “And I suppose that doing beau¬ 
tiful things for other people is your way of being 
happy yourself so I’ll have to let you off from the 
grand personal splurge I’d like you to have. I am 
glad you are going to have the children for perhaps 
then you won’t mind so much if I—go away.” 

Her uncle looked at her in quick concern. Where 



AFTERMATH 


317 


did Daphne want to go? With whom was she 
going ? 

“What is it you want to do, dear?” he questioned. 

He could think of two things that Daphne might 
desire to do, either one of which would take her 
away from him. He hardly knew which he dreaded 
most. 

“If you and Aunt Lucinda don’t mind too much, 
I want to go to Europe—to study and travel but 
mostly to study—seriously—to learn to really and 
truly sing.’’ 

So it was the singing and not marrying the child 
was thinking of. The Reverend Robert was a little 
thankful. The singing did not have quite the same 
seal of finality about it that marriage would have. 
Still, he was a little sorry, too. He did not covet 
a career for Daphne. He thought her burgeoning 
womanhood would want a deeper, richer, more fruit¬ 
ful soil in which to plant its roots. A career would 
never satisfy her—never in the world. 

“Of course, we don’t mind, child,” he answered. 
“There is no reason why you should not go and 
study and travel to your heart’s content though we 
shall miss you terribly and want you back always as 
soon as your heart bids you come. But don’t think 
me unkind if I tell you that I hope it will be a long, 
long time, perhaps as long as never, before you will 
'really and truly’ sing, if by that you mean going 
on the stage, as a professional singer. I hope long 
before that time arrives you will have found another, 




318 PETER S BEST SELLER 


higher career—home, love, babies. That is the best 
of all for a woman, Daphne.” 

“But I don’t expect to have any of those things,” 
said Daphne. “At least not for a long time, perhaps 
as long as never, as you say. I don’t think I shall 
ever marry, Uncle Robert.” 

“Tut! Tut! my dear! Every girl says that until 
Mr. Right comes along.” 

“But I mean it,” said Daphne gravely and her 
uncle realized that the hand which lay inside his was 
a little cold. 




CHAPTER XV 


AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 

Danversville being only human was not slow 
in registering the conclusion that a young woman 
who had at least thirty thousand dollars, and some 
said more, in her own right wasn’t exactly a person 
to be snubbed or ostracized. The wind veering, if 
it did not entirely drive away the hornets, at least 
rendered their attacks increasingly negligible. 
Daphne’s conduct had, of course, been irregular. 
One couldn’t deny that but there hadn’t been any¬ 
thing actually wrong about it, at least it was to be 
assumed not, and the man had evidently been sent 
immediately packing either by Daphne or her elders. 
Jimmy Danvers insisted rather grimly that the ban¬ 
ishment was Daphne’s own, though how he knew 
was a mystery, for he never went near the parsonage 
now, was, indeed, head over heels devoted to Angela, 
with an engagement to be announced any minute, so 
his mother hinted. 

The days passed and still no word came from 
Peter. Daphne decided that he must be working on 
his book and though his silence hurt and puzzled 
her, she did not precisely resent it for she felt very 

humble so far as Peter’s writing was concerned. 

3i9 



320 PETER S BEST SELLER 


Far be it from her to wish to come even for a 
moment between him and his work if he were really 
working. All the same she did not make as much 
progress as she had intended in the process of strik¬ 
ing Peter out of her mind and memory. Perverse 
in absence as in presence, Peter persisted and would 
not let himself be forgotten. 

And then one day Daphne chanced to come upon 
an item in a Boston paper which announced that 
Miss Marian Somers was cruising along the Maine 
coast in her father’s yacht, the Albatross. Among 
the guests aboard were Mr. Peter Loomis, the well- 

known author and- But Daphne never went on 

to discover who Miss Somers’ other guests were. 
She threw down the paper and went into the house 
and upstairs to her own room. Sitting on the cre- 
tonned window seat from which Peter had once 
called to her to come down to him under the stars, 
she cupped her chin in her hands and watched the 
robins hopping about on the green sward, chirruping 
gaily and triumphantly at intervals. But she wasn’t 
seeing the robins. She was seeing a white yacht, 
sailing blue seas and Marian’s lovely face as it had 
looked that day from the motor car with its halo 
of fluttering blue chiffon. So Peter wasn’t writing 
his book at all. He was idling away his days on the 
Albatross with Marian, perhaps essaying another 
Beginning with her or perhaps, by this time, there 
was even a new girl, a new Beginning in progress. 
Daphne’s lips curled a little scornfully. The scorn 




AS IN THE BEGINNING 321 


was for herself, for Peter, for any girl who believed 
in what his eyes said when his lips were discreetly 
silent and non-committal. Verily, what fools these 
mortals were, especially when they believed in love! 

A verse Peter had quoted once to her came back 
to her mind. 

“Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand, 
My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night. 
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—it gives a lovely 
light” 

Love, it seemed, was a candle burning at both 
ends. What was the use of its lovely light if it was 
to be gone so soon? And the Great Adventure— 
was it then nothing but a shining palace built upon 
the sands—quicksands? So it seemed. 

It was from that time that Daphne began to make 
definite plans for the future. She got expert advice 
as to the best teachers in Europe, the best place to 
go to study, the best season in which to start. 
Finding that her uncle was unwilling that she should 
make the sally into the great world all alone, she 
hit upon the happy idea of taking her old music 
teacher, Esther Bailey, with her as a chaperone and 
for good measure she decided also to take Esther’s 
pretty, little orphan niece, Jenny, who was already 
exhibiting considerable talent as a pianist and would, 
they said, go far with the right teachers. It was to 
be a sort of dream-come-true excursion for all three 
of them. Daphne discovered that not the least of 



322 PETER S BEST SELLER 


the fun of being a sudden-heiress was because you 
could make other people surprisingly happy, and that 
making other people surprisingly happy had a con¬ 
siderable backwash of happiness for yourself. 

“My dear, it is like a miracle!” sighed Miss Esther 
one day—the day Daphne wrote engaging passage 
on a steamer from New York to Bordeaux stopping 
en route at the Azores. “Here I’ve never been 
farther from Danversville than Boston. And now, 
all at once, I am going on a long sea voyage and to 
Paris—a place I’ve dreamed about all my life and 
wanted to see. I am as excited as a child over it all. 
But you—why, Daphne, sometimes I can’t help feel¬ 
ing as if we were turned around and that I must be 
the lovely, young heiress with the wonderful voice 
and you the staid old maid, you are so much calmer 
about it than I am.” 

Daphne smiled at that. 

“Maybe I am not so calm inside as I look from 
outside,” she said. “It is my dream, too, that is 
coming true by magic, Miss Esther. I wouldn’t be 
human if I weren’t excited about it.” 

“I know, but you don’t seem as happy as you 
ought to be,” objected Miss Esther, “not near so 
happy as you used to be when you didn’t think there 
was the slightest chance of your dream coming true. 
There isn’t anything wrong, is there, Daphne ? 
Don’t answer if you don’t want to, my dear. But 
it isn’t—it isn’t Jimmy Danvers and Angela, is it?” 
She did not quite dare to ask if it was Peter Loomis 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 323 


who had gone away so suddenly that was behind 
Daphne’s soberness, 

“No indeed!” denied Daphne with a decided shake 
of her head. The answer was quite truthful. If 
she wasn’t exactly as happy as she ought by all rights 
to be, if her dream, coming true, wasn’t quite the 
rainbow thing she had fancied it would be, neither 
Jimmy nor Angela had anything to do with the 
matter and certainly not Jimmy and Angela. “Don’t 
worry about that, Miss Esther. I am as glad as I 
can be that Jimmy and Angela are going to get 
married. I wrote him so last night. And I meant it 
—every word of it. Jimmy is a dear and I am sure 
Angela will make both him and his mother very 
happy.” 

“I am glad you feel that way. I didn’t think it 
could be that that was troubling you, for everybody 
knows you could have had Jimmy for the taking.- 
Still, when you sang that solo last night in church, 
there was something in your voice that made my 
heart ache though I never heard you sing so 
beautifully.” 

“Dear Miss Esther! You are certainly imagining 
things.” Daphne patted the gentle spinster’s hand 
reassuringly. “There is nothing in the world the 
matter with me. How could there be when I have 
a closet full of heavenly clothes all new at once, not 
to speak of dozens of lovely things you don’t mention 
such as I have coveted all my life? But just you 
wait till we get to Paris, % old dear. We’ll buy our- 



324 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


selves such clothes as Danversville never dreamed of. 
They won’t recognize us when we get back—if we 
ever do come back!” she threatened gaily. 

August passed swiftly and busily in preparation 
for the journey. Already the golden rod was com¬ 
ing out along the roadside and the asters made a 
purple glory in the meadows. Only a few weeks 
more and Daphne would leave Danversville behind 
her, never to come back in the old way. She would 
be even more grown up when she came back and 
that other world she was going to so very, very dif¬ 
ferent from Danversville would have set its seal 
upon her. There was a curious feeling of finality 
about everything she did those late August days to 
Daphne. It was like coming to the last pages of 
the first volume of a series. In a few days she 
would close the book and begin the sequel. And the 
first book had, after all, been very happy reading. 

She had so often wearied of Danversville, wished 
so often she could get away from it, but now that 
she was doing that very thing she developed a kind 
of wistful affection and tenderness for it. After all 
Danversville had meant to be kind, had been kind, 
indeed, according to its lights. And there were so 
many places in it that she loved dearly, aside from 
the parsonage, which was and would remain the 
dearest place in the world to her, no matter where 
she wandered in the years to come. She loved a 
certain little glade in the pine woods near the brook, 
a glade where there was a stump and a log. And 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 325 


she loved the little river on which she had spent so 
many happy hours. She knew she would remember 
its sparkling sun-shot eddies, its green wooded slopes 
with their cardinal flowers and silver birch trees even 
when she was beholding the grandeur of the Rhine. 
Would even a nightingale in Sicily stir her heart 
as thrushes stirred it in a pine wood at dusk beside 
the river ? 

It was the last week in August, only a few days 
before she was to sail, that Daphne happened to 
pick up the current number of The International, 
Gideon Blakesley’s magazine, which was not at all 
as Bolshevistic as it sounded, having been christened 
years before the red whirlwind swept the world and 
being international only in the sense that it tried 
faithfully to secure the best in prose and poetry 
that writers in any land had to offer. 

Idly turning its leaves, she came unexpectedly 
upon a page which had two “Poems with Decora¬ 
tions” by Peter Loomis. She read them, hardly 
breathing while she read. Peter’s poems—and so 
beautiful they made the tears come in her eyes as 
only music usually affected her and very beautiful 
music at that! So Peter could write poetry as well 
as prose. And such poetry! Marvellous love poems, 
both of them couched in haunting cadence and 
strange, lovely, original imagery. She remembered 
that she had thought that first day in the woods that 
there was a real Peter behind the whimsical philan¬ 
derer he chose to play for the world’s gaze. She 



326 PETER S BEST SELLER 


thought now it was this real Peter who had written 
these poems out of the deep places of his heart. Ah, 
why hadn’t he shown them to her? He might have 
known she would have been intensely interested. 
Wonderful as it was to write novels, Daphne thought 
it even more wonderful to write great poems. And 
that these were great it seemed to her, just as they 
had seemed great to Sue, weeks ago. 

Daphne went back to read over the first poem 
almost reverently. Suddenly, as she read, one line, a 
line about fireflies, stood out from the rest curiously, 
unaccountably familiar. Where had she heard the 
line before? And then she knew, as it came echoing 
back in her memory in Marian Somers’ cool, culti¬ 
vated voice. It was Marian who had quoted the 
line the day they had found Peter by the wall. They 
had spoken of some poems she recalled. She had 
not known that the poems were Peter’s. She had 
not known that Peter wrote poetry. But Marian 
had known and had quoted from this one, almost 
as if it had belonged to her. Perhaps it did so 
belong. Maybe it had been written—in the Marian 
era. Daphne smiled a shade ironically at the 
thought. Again she turned to the poems. There 
were moon silvered meadows in them, whip-poor- 
wills—the murmur of the wind in pines as well as 
the fireflies. These things seemed to belong to 

Danversville. They seemed to belong- But 

here Daphne closed the magazine quickly shutting 
out the sight of the “Poems with Decorations,” 




AS IN THE BEGINNING 327 


shutting out, too, the thought which had come 
against her will to her. 

The next morning brought a copy of the Inter¬ 
national, postmarked from Boston, addressed to 
Daphne in typed writing. Daphne tore off the 
wrapper, turned to the “Poems with Decorations” 
by Peter Loomis. There they were, just as in the 
other copy she had already seen, except that at the 
top of the page in Peter’s scrawling, characteristic 
hand was written “Poems for Daphne.” On the 
margin opposite each was a date, successive June 
dates. Consulting the calendar and her own vivid 
memory of a certain week or so in June, Daphne 
discovered that the first poem belonged to the 
Saturday when she and Peter had sat under the 
apple tree in the evening till the dew “fell” and she 
had told him about her mother’s Great Adventure 
and of a little girl who was at once troubled and 
proud at being “different” from the rest of Danvers- 
ville. And the second poem was dated on Sunday 
—the Sunday when Jimmy Danvers had been defi¬ 
nitely dismissed and she had run away from some¬ 
thing she had seen in Peter’s eyes in the starlight. 
So they were not Marian’s poems—not Marian’s, 
nor yet a dream lady’s. They were her poems. 
Peter had written them for her though he had not 
shown them to her. Why not? Or rather why did 
he send them to her now after all these weeks? 
This was a question to which Daphne had no answer 
or at least pretended to herself that she had not. 



328 PETER S BEST SELLER 


And yet all day she went about singing as she 
had not sung since that night in the woods with 
Peter. Aunt Lucinda noticed it with satisfaction. 
Not knowing about the “Poems for Daphne” she 
concluded that Daphne was “chirking up,” beginning 
to forget about the Loomis man, if that was what 
had been on her mind all these weeks as she some¬ 
times feared. 

The next day there arrived from Boston a pack¬ 
age which proved to be a book of Alfred Noyes’ 
poems. A pressed four leaf clover marked the place 
where Daphne was evidently intended to pause and 
read and ponder, the page on which that most 
magical of the poet’s songs began, the song called 
“In The Heart Of The Woods.” 

Before she began to read, Daphne smiled at the 
four leaf clover. Was it not the very one she, her¬ 
self, had picked under the maple tree and given to 
Peter, if not with her love, at least with her “best 
of luck?” So he had kept it after all just as he had 
promised and was sending it back also just as he had 
promised, though it had not come upon her wedding 
day. 

And then Daphne forgot the clover in the enchant¬ 
ment of the poem. She would have loved “In The 
Heart Of The Woods” in any case for its singing 
cadences, its grace of phrase and imagery. But she 
loved it doubly because it came as a message from 
Peter. Through the poet’s lovely lines, he seemed 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 329 


to be challenging her to remember their own strange 
and beautiful night in the heart of the woods under 
the June skies. 

The third morning brought a letter from Peter. 
Daphne took it with her unopened into the woods. 
She had a fancy to read it sitting on the very stump 
where she had sat that June afternoon playing The 
Wedding Guest to Peter’s Mariner. She had a 
feeling that the woods was the only place in which 
to read a letter from Peter, particularly so long and 
fat a one as this promised to be. She slit the 
envelope, drew out the letter, began to read. 

“Daphne, Dearly Beloved”—So it rather amaz¬ 
ingly began— 


“When I left Danversville, of blessed memory, I 
persuaded Marian and her father to convey me to 
and deposit me upon my favorite desert island off 
the Maine coast, where I have a shack—a poor thing, 
but my own. Here I assiduously marooned myself 
and worked as if the old ’un himself were after me. 
Lord, how I worked! Not even you, most rigorous 
one, could have desired me to agonize more fiend¬ 
ishly over the thing than I did. It possessed me, 
body and soul, built a barricade between me and the 
outer world, said to me, ‘Peter, thou shalt not loaf. 
Thou shalt not make love. Thou shalt work. Thou 
shalt write a Real Book.’ 

“It is only just now done and in Giddy’s pos¬ 
session. He professes to be immensely excited over 
it, says it is ‘magnificent,’ which is all right to start 
with, as one naturally has to make fifty percent 
deduction on all publisher’s exaggerated comments. 



330 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


Anyway he is making his presses hot for execution 
and by the grace of God and the printers, it ought 
to be out by October. 

“By the way, you may be interested to know that 
I changed one part of the plot toward the end of 
the story. You may remember that I was going to 
have my man do the one decent and unselfish act 
of his life and go off without telling the girl he 
loved her. I meant to have him do it. He honestly 
meant to do it himself up to the last minute. But 
we didn’t either of us count on the girl or on last 
minute psychology. He went to say good-bye to 
her and discovered she loved him, loved him enough 
to risk taking the Passionate Pilgrimage with him 
instead of enjoying the peace and certitude the other 
man’s love offered her. For you see she didn’t 
happen to love the other man and she did love the 
Pilgrim, selfishly erratic, incorrigibly nomadic as 
he was. Of course, he accepted the sacrifice and 
carried her off with him to the Lord knows where. 
Wish ’em luck, Daphne. They’ll need it. Marriage 
is a terrific gamble. 

“Sue prefers this version, says it is more romantic 
and human. Giddy rather hankered after the 
original, said it was more artistic and had the popular 
‘soul clutch.’ Marian says ‘Oh, let them be happy!’ 
Her mind runs that way just now for she has just 
announced her engagement to a young English M. P. 
who has been in love with her for years and finally 
came over and took the citadel by storm, the only 
way with Marian. 

“But to come to ourselves, there is a world to say, 
Daphne dear. I hardly know where to begin. Did 
it hurt you to have me go off without saying any 
of it, to have me keep silent all this time? If it did, 
I am sorry, but it seemed the best thing to do. 
I wanted to write you a hundred letters, to spill 
‘I love you’ over every page. Why didn’t I, then? 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 331 


Listen, Daphne, Dear Heart, and I will tell you how 
and why it was. 

“You see, dear, I wanted to play fair, to leave 
you quite free for a while, free to get a perspective 
on me and my ways, to realize that even though I 
loved you, I’d still make an execrable husband, just 
as you said yourself. I wanted you to have a chance 
to miss me and to get over missing me if you could, 
to find out for sure whether I was or was not what 
you wanted. Maybe I ought to hope you hadn’t 
missed me at all, dear, but I don’t. Instead I hope 
your heart has been crying out for me all these 
weeks as mine has been crying for you. That is 
how selfish and sinful I am, Daphne Joyce. 

“And then there was the Book. I felt I had to 
give it an undivided allegiance. If I began to spill 
‘I love you’ all over the paper, I knew it would be 
all up with the Book. I didn’t dare begin. I had to 
shut you out of my life, in a way, until the Book 
was done. It will happen again, dear, if you marry 
me. There will be times that even when we walk 
together, I shall be a thousand miles away in another 
world. There will be times when even you, my most 
beloved, will be an exile from my heart and mind 
The thing works like that, Daphne, I can’t deny it. 
We have to face it now, you and I, we must not 
pretend something different now and get hurt later 
on when it comes to pass. It is one of the things 
I want you to remember hardest when you decide 
for or against me. 

“And then again, there was the Book in another 
way. I wanted to have something worthy of myself 
and you to bring you when I came asking for your 
love, Dear Heart, a Real Book such as you wanted 
me to write, with myself in it. I’ve done it, dear. 
It’s a Real Book, with myself and you and God in it. 
Whether it is as good as Giddy insists, is another 
matter. Time alone will test its worth or its worth- 




332 PETER S BEST SELLER 


lessness. I don’t pretend to judge that or to know, 
but I do know that when I wrote I was serving a 
golden God—the God of Love. Sue was right. 
It was that I needed before I could come into my 
own, to have my spirit ‘stabbed broad awake,’ to 
be annointed—crucified by love. 

“Daphne, Daphne dear, you don’t know how 
lonely I’ve been all my life, how I have been looking, 
looking for you everywhere, north, south, east and 
west, the whole world over. And then one June 
day you came. I think I began to know that first 
moment it was you—my girl of all the world—when 
you stood there looking down at me, with the sun¬ 
shine flashing gold on your hair and your face like 
a rose. Don’t tell me you weren’t blown to me on 
the winds of God for I know better. 

“And that night in the woods! Ah, but I knew 
it well enough then, had known it for twenty-four 
hours beyond any doubting. Daphne, Daphne girl, 
how could you have thought those were nothing but 
dream kisses? They were real—real as life, real as 
a man’s white flame of passion for the woman he 
loves in spirit as well as in flesh. And you—you too, 
heard the call of the Magic Wood. Don’t deny it, 
dear. I know. The Magic Wood was just around 
the corner for both of us that night. I think you 
listened for me to say ‘I love you’ then. Didn’t you. 
Daphne? God knows 1 wanted to say it, could 
hardly keep from saying it. But you see I couldn’t, 
little Daphne. You were in trust and I—I loved 
you too well to dare to say it then. Do you under¬ 
stand, dear? And besides, I didn’t want to trap 
you into the Magic Wood by starlight when perhaps 
by the next day’s sunshine you would not want to 
stay there. 

“But now the time has come to say ‘I love you— 
love you—love you’—to ask if you can find it in 
your heart to love me a little too. No, I won’t put 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 333 


it that way. I am a demanding lover, Daphne, and 
if you only care a little, then forget it. A little 
isn’t enough for me nor for you, either. It must 
be the Great Adventure or nothing. 

“But think well before you answer, dear. 
Remember I am thirty-eight and you are twenty- 
two. When I am fifty you will be only in the early 

thirties. When I am seventy you will- But 

figure it out for yourself. Think what it means. 
Youth should be for youth. I grant that. Unless 
—but it is for you to fill out that ‘unless’ if and as, 
you will. I will not plead my cause there. If it 
needs any pleading there is no cause. 

“And then there is your career to consider. Sue 
told me she saw in the papers that Paul Clement died 
and left you a fortune and that it was reported you 
were going abroad to study. Your wings are free, 
then, Mademoiselle Skylark. You can fly as far 
and high as you choose, up to the sun itself, if you 
like. You could do it. I know it. There is nothing 
to prevent—nothing but love and me. Love and I— 
we two—would be utterly fatal to a career, I am 
afraid. Our skylark would have to keep its song 
for us instead of giving it to the world. We are 
that selfish—love and I. If it is a case of choosing 
between dreams, choose the one that is dearest, 
nearest your heart. I don’t want to hold you back 
or clip your wings. I am ready to give you up 
if you want to be given up. But oh, my dear, I 
hope you don’t want it. We would try very hard 
to make up to you—love and I—for all you gave up 
for us. And we do need you so, Dear Heart. Don’t 
you need us, too, dear? More than you need a 
career? We hope so. 

“Then there is another thing—perhaps two other 
things—which ought to be said in all fairness and 
so that you and I may understand each other fully. 
Marian, in her wrath, accused me that night at 





334 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


the Inn, of being temperamentally incapable of fealty 
to any one land or woman. There is truth in her 
arraignment, Daphne, at least, a part truth. I am 
too much a citizen of the world, too passionate a 
pilgrim to be violently prejudiced in favor of any 
one country, even my own, though I’d make shift 
to die for America if she needed my death. For 
that matter I’d die for Russia or Poland if it could 
help the agonies of either. It isn’t only one’s own 
country one is willing to pay a debt for, it is for 
all humanity. At any rate I think you understand, 
dear, that for me and such as me, 

'Worlds were made for men to see 
And ships for men to sail.’ 

Even for love of you I wouldn’t promise to break 
my pilgrim staff or cease from journeying. Selfish 
again? Yes, very selfish, but honest, too, Daphne 
Joyce. Love and I—we make no promises we can¬ 
not, will not, keep. 

“But Daphne, Marian was wrong in her second 
accusation. I have always known I could and would 
be true to one woman—if she were the one woman 
for sure. Are you smiling, dear, mocking me? 
Don’t. You know about Marian, how I all but 
married her, all but loved her and there have been 
other all-buts, too many, I admit. I have been 
looking for love all my life, hoping against hope 
to find it whenever a new woman with a beautiful 
face crossed my path. Are you women so different, 
Daphne? Don’t you always think way down in 
your heart when you meet a new man, if he is at all 
acceptable, that he may be the man? I wonder. 
Anyway I know that I kept searching, sometimes 
trying hard to make myself believe I had found what 
I sought because I was so lonely, wanted love so 
much. But always before it was too late I woke 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 335 


from my dreaming and took the trail in the other 
direction. I’ve kept the kingdom always—for you. 
You are the first woman I have ever asked to marry 
me. Can you believe that, Daphne? It is true. 
There has never really been another woman for me. 
There never will be now. Try to believe that too, 
dear. Whatever my feet may do, for my heart, the 
quest is finished. The trail ends—in you. You will 
never need to doubt. Love and I—we make no 
promises we cannot, will not, keep. 

“And now, Dear Heart, what is the answer ? Do 
you hear the voices calling 'Away, come away’? 
Somehow I think you do, Daphne Joyce, that the 
song is in your heart too, night and day, the song 
of the Magic Wood. Is it so, Daphne? Shall we 
wander on together, you and I? Answer, answer 
true. Answer quick. I love you and I am 

“Yours 

“Peter.” 

This was the letter which Daphne read and re-read 
in the pine wood that August morning under the 
singing pines. As she read, her heart sang for joy. 

So it hadn’t been cowardice at all on Peter’s part 
that had kept him silent. It was because, being 
Peter, he had to “play fair.” He had not even sent 
her the poems, although they were hers by right, 
lest her judgment be enmeshed by their glamor, just 
as he had not sought to lead her into the Magic 
Wood that night though it lay just around the 
corner, because she was “in trust” and under the 
enchanted spell of the night. 

And so she had not dreamed his kisses at all. 
Daphne’s cheeks flamed hot in memory. They had 



336 PETER S BEST SELLER 


been real kisses, “real as a man’s white flame of 
passion for the woman he loves in spirit as well as 
in flesh.” Ah, Peter! Peter! It had been like 
that with him and yet he had been strong enough 
to go away and keep silence for her sake and that 
of the Book. He had, indeed, played fair, more than 
fair, had not taken a lover’s advantage of the things 
she had said in her dreams, if she had said them 
aloud, as she now guessed that she had. 

He had left her free. Ah, but she did not want 
freedom. He could not frighten her with dragons 
along the path, not with disparity of age or threats 
of loneliness and journeyings. And what did she 
care how many women he had all but loved, so long 
as the trail ended with her? She had had Jimmy 
for an “all-but” herself. What did anything matter? 
Peter loved her, wanted her, needed her. That was 
the answer to every question, the silencing of every 
doubt, the banishment of any regret. Now that 
at last he had said the magic words for which she 
had waited so long, Daphne knew that she would 
arise and follow this man to the end of the world 
if he asked it, just as her mother had arisen and 
gone where David Joyce piped. It was Kismet. 

And then lifting her eyes, Daphne beheld Peter 
himself coming down the path toward her. In a 
second his hands held hers, his eyes sought to read 
all he wanted to know in her lovely, flushed young 
face. 

“I couldn’t wait for your answer to come to me. 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 337 


I had to come in person to get it. I had to know, 
Daphne Joyce,” he said. 

“I think you have known a long time, Peter. 
Anyway I have,” sighed Daphne. 

What followed is neither your concern nor mine 
but belongs exclusively to Peter and Daphne just 
inside the circle of the Magic Wood. 

“How did you know I was here?” asked Daphne, 
a few moments later seated with Peter’s arm around 
her on the log, which hitherto he had been forced 
to occupy severely alone. 

“Aunt Lucinda said you were out walking and I 
had a hunch I should find you here. Daphne Joyce, 
how soon will you marry me?” 

Daphne turned to look at her lover, a little startled. 

“Good gracious, Peter ! We have only this minute 
become engaged. When do you want me to marry 
you ?” 

“Tomorrow,” replied Peter calmly. “I’ve got a 
special license and you’ve got Uncle Robert and here 
is the ring.” He fumbled with his left hand in his 
pocket, his right hand being busy, and produced a 
slender platinum circle set with tiny diamonds which 
caught a million lights as the sunbeams smote them. 

Daphne’s eyes adored the ring but her eyebrows 
arched very much as they had that other day in the 
same place when she first met Peter and felt called 
upon to register disapproval for his “magerful” 
ways. 



338 PETER’S BEST SELLER 


“Seems to me you took a good deal for granted,” 
she reproved. 

“Why not?” grinned Peter. “Haven’t we both 
always known we were going to do it when we got 
around to it? Besides I hadn’t time to go through 
the usual formal preliminaries. Time presses. I 
have a stateroom engaged. I’m sailing for Algiers 
right away. My next book is to be laid there and I 
have to run down and sop up some local color in 
advance.” 

“Your next book!” Daphne looked a little dis¬ 
mayed. “You are going to begin on a new book 
right away?” 

“Well, maybe not precisely right away. A man 
is entitled to at least one honeymoon uninterrupted. 
But I thought we might like to do the sopping to¬ 
gether if you liked the idea.” 

“I see,” said Daphne, rather soberly. “When do 
you sail?” 

“Friday. But why youf Aren’t you coming with 
me, Daphne Joyce?” 

Daphne looked away from Peter into the deeps 
of the wood. A gold winged bird perched on a 
shimmering birch branch within her line of vision 
and poured forth an ecstatic stave of song. Friday! 
Daphne’s own passage was booked for Saturday. 
Should she let Miss Esther and Jenny sail to their 
happiness without her? The moment had come to 
choose between her dreams, to see which was truly 
dearer? Peter and Algiers! A honeymoon and 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 339 


then maybe loneliness when the next book began to 
possess Peter and she was left outside. Or Paris 
and the thrill of beginning her own career? The 
gold winged bird flashed off into the forest. With 
him went Daphne’s lesser dream—unregretted. 

She turned to Peter waiting for her answer with 
a smile—a smile, a woman would have understood. 

“Yes, Peter,” she said. “Pm coming.” 

And thus, all unknowing, the world lost its chance 
of hearing a voice as golden as the gold winged 
bird’s, but Peter and Daphne, just beginning to hear 
the “Music of the dream that never dies”, were the 
gainers for the world’s loss. 


THE END 





















MARK GRAY’S HERITAGE 

A Romance 


By Eliot Harlow Robinson 


Author of “Smiles: A Rose of the Cumberlands, 

“Smiling Pass,” “The Maid of Mirabelle,” etc. 

Cloth, i2mo, with a poster jacket, $1.90 

“What is bred in the bone will never come out of 
the flesh.” 

Mr. Robinson’s distinguished success came with the 
acclaim accredited to his novel, SMILES, “The Best- 
Loved Book of the Year,” and its sequel, SMILING 
PASS. With delicate humor and a sincere faith in the 
beautiful side of human nature, Mr. Robinson has 
created for himself a host of enthusiastic admirers. 
In his new book he chooses a theme, suggested perhaps 
by the old proverb quoted above (“Pilpay’s Fables”). 
His setting is a Quaker village, his theme the conflict 
between grave Quaker ideals and the strength and hot 
blood of impulsive Mark Gray. 

Here is a book that is worthy of the reception ac¬ 
corded SMILES by all readers who appreciate a story 
of deep significance, simply yet powerfully built upon 
fundamental passions, wrought with a philosophy that 
always sees the best in troubled times. 

The enthusiastic editor who passed on MARK 
GRAY’S HERITAGE calls it — hardly too emphati¬ 
cally — “A mighty good story with plenty of entertain¬ 
ment for those who like action (there is more of that 
in it than in any other of Mr. Robinson’s novels). The 
reading public will unquestionably call it another ‘cour¬ 
age book’ — which they called the SMILES books, you 
know The language is both strong and smooth. The 
story has a punch!” 











TOM AKERLEY 


His Adventures in the Tall Timber and on Gaspard’s 
Clearing on the Indian River 


®t/ Theodore Roberts 

Author of “The Fighting Starkleys” 

“ Red Feathers ” etc. 

Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated, $1.75 


The story of fearless young Tom Akerley, who, when 
^ this story opens, is an officer in the Dominion Air 
Force. On the occasion of giving war medals, the 
Colonel of the Air Force refuses to honor a dead 
comrade of Tom’s and in a fit of anger Tom hits the 
Colonel. Fearing trouble for assaulting a superior 
officer, Tom takes to his airplane and flies away in 
the night. His plane is wrecked, but “the man from 
outside” manages to land in a Canadian backwoods 
settlement and takes up life there among the primitive 
people. He has many interesting adventures and 
hair-breadth escapes as he tramps the tall timber with 
an Indian trapper. 

That Mr. Roberts knows the Canadian woods and 
the wild life in them, as do few living writers, has been 
shown by his previous successful stories. As a stylist 
and as a descriptive writer he occupies an enviable 
position in literature; but above all he is known as an 
inimitable story teller. His latest book has that dash 
and fervor, that veritable riot of action, which is so 
appealing to boy readers and their older brothers. 









C83^C8332C83C83C83C82C83^C83C83^ 


SURPRISING ANTONIA 


«S.y c Doroth\) Foster Qilman 



Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated , $1.90 


This ingenious lively story recounts the anxieties and 
successes of three resourceful charming girls — two of 
them daughters of a Harvard professor. They are 
eager to go to Europe, but lack the necessary funds. 
They answer an advertisement in a Boston paper, and 
thus sub-let the professor’s house for the season, they 
themselves doing all the housework. An interesting 
family from California rents the house and from the 
mistakes and surprises arising from this merger of East 
and West, no end of fun ensues. Under one roof goes 
on this gay and gracious life as kitchen collides with 
parlor, and back-stairs and front-stairs compete with 
marvelous ingenuity. The glamour of the trip to Europe 
fades in the light of a great love and in smiles and 
laughter “ effete Cambridge ” puts up a brave fight, and 
the “Woolly West” shows itself appreciative of the real 
things in a Cambridge education. 








IN GREENBROOK 



<7}p %Terr it l *P. Jlllen 


Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated, $2.00 



A novel of great interest and charm, a cross-section 
of rural New England, which portrays with intimate 
detail the daily life and doings in a typical Vermont 
village. Though small, Greenbrook had been for two 
decades blessed by the ministerings of the kindly old 
country practitioner, Doctor Derby. When you read of 
the time when it becomes necessary for him to take 
down his shingle and pass into the only rest which 
comes to the conscientious country doctor, you will 
rejoice with the people of the village that his place is to 
be taken temporarily by as worthy a successor as young 
Doctor May forth. You will be equally delighted to hear 
of Richard Mayforth’s final decision to forsake his 
appointment to the staff of a large city hospital to 
remain permanently among the Greenbrook folk, who 
so direly need him — a fact which aids materially in 
bringing about a reconciliation with beautiful Helen 
Hentley. Their life and work together in Greenbrook 
make a charming idyl. 


To quote one enthusiastic editor: “IN GREEN¬ 
BROOK stirs up the same interest in small town life 
that MAIN STREET does. In fact, this novel does for 
New England what MAIN STREET did for the 
Middle West.” 

















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